Guess where the latest opposition to the crackdown on illegal immigration is coming from. The Wall Street Journal, that’s where.
Saturday’s edition featured a quarter-page editorial titled, “The Other Jobs Crisis.”
Not the 9.1 national unemployment rate, it explained, but the labor shortage caused by a lack of immigrants to bring in the crops, work strenuous construction jobs and fill other vacancies in the low end of the unskilled labor market.
Not only are fruit and vegetable farmers screaming for relief, there is trouble at the high end of the labor market, too. “ … tech companies have trouble finding computer scientists and engineers. They need more visas for foreigners who study science and math in the U.S.”
The WSJ got specific:
“ … thousands of workers have been scared away by U.S. immigration laws, leaving unfilled tens of thousands of jobs that few Americans seem to want.
“Hardest hit are farmers. Most of the 1.6 million agricultural laborers in the U.S. are Hispanic, and a majority of them are assumed to be undocumented immigrants. (Pause here to recognize that there are two kinds of immigrants: illegals who are criminals and undocumented immigrants who are needed in the fields to keep the fruit and vegetables from rotting. Farmers desperately need the undocumented workers. Political opportunists, like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, can see no one but criminal illegals, who look very much like votes and campaign contributions to them.)
WITHOUT A STEADY pool of migrant labor during harvest season, farmers have lost millions of dollars as crops have needlessly rotted.
“In Washington State, apple orchards are running a radio recruitment campaign offering jobs that pay $100 to $150 a day, but so far with little success. Washington Governor Chris Gregoire said, “We’re not getting anybody to take a bite on these jobs, so we don’t have anybody to do these jobs.
“California avocado growers and Texas vegetable farmers are also desperate for help. Similar stories come from Colorado, Idaho, Oklahoma, Vermont and more.”
The editorial goes on to cite a case history:
“… Georgia this spring passed a law that, among other steps, obliges employers to use the E-Verify system to check the legal status of prospective workers against a federal database. … Within weeks of the Georgia law’s adoption, farmers reported a shortfall of 11,000 workers, affecting perishable fruit and vegetables most of all. The estimated cost to the Georgia economy will be $391 million this year. …. Some 3,260 full-time jobs were lost in the food production and related businesses such as transport or packaging.
“ … Migrant labor is highly sensitive to market signals. When the economic or political climate sours, they choose not to come or to avoid certain states. Over time, food producers can make a similar decision and move their operations overseas. Peaches don’t have to be grown in Georgia or lettuce in Yuma. Republicans have made immigration control one of their main passions, yet they continue to ignore the economic costs. They claim to champion deregulation and business-led growth, but then they impose new hiring and enforcement burdens on any business’s most important assets — its workers..
“There is a better way. At the state level, stop treating Mexican fruit pickers like alien invaders. In Congress, overhaul the guest worker program to widen avenues for legal immigration, drop calls for obligatory E-Verify and offer those in the country without papers a way to become legal. The result would be fewer crops rotting in the fields, more jobs for Americans, faster economic growth, and fewer farmers taking their production overseas.”
REMEMBER, YOU heard these words straight from the center of Conservative headquarters, so listen up.
