So, Donald Trump has basically said everybody is deportable. Well, not those of us who are US citizens. But if you aren’t? Well.
There’s a problem with that, though: California farmers are going to lose their work force. At which point defenders of their God-Emperor Donald the Trump whine, “there’s a farmworker visa they can use to get the labor they need!”
Really? Let’s go look at that visa, the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers visa:
The current H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers visa works fine for states like North Carolina that have an actual growing season and a specific set of crops requiring a specific set of skills. Their association of North Carolina agricultural producers named as a joint employer can hire H-2A workers then allocate them to farmers on an as-needed basis during the growing season, then send them home at the end of the growing season. But that doesn’t work at all for states like California that have a year round growing season with wildly varying labor requirements based on what’s happening at any given moment of time. H-2A basically allows an agricultural worker to be here in the US for, practically speaking, 9 months out of every year. California has a year-round growing season. H-2A also requires the worker to be employed in agriculture for a single employer for the entire time. But California agriculture is “bursty” — a farmer will need a hundred workers to pick the lemons over a two week period of time, then a dozen workers to prune the lemon trees afterwards. During the time that California agriculture doesn’t need workers, workers travel to other Western states to commit random acts of agriculture there, too, or work construction or other jobs while waiting for the next burst of labor to be needed, or simply sit unemployed for a few weeks between agricultural jobs. This would not be permitted under the H-2A visa.
The reality is that California agriculture is reliant upon Mexican migrant workers. We don’t have another workforce available with the level of flexibility of the current workforce, which is constantly shifting around or periodically unemployed as the farmers hire the workers they need when they need them then let them go at the end of the need. Americans today seem to lack the intestinal fortitude to give up their stable comfortable life and live the migrant life. Heck, they lack the intestinal fortitude to deal with change at all, see, e.g., the resistance to the fact that the city of Santa Clara is changing as migrant technology workers move here. Does anybody really think that a people that throws a hissy fit over a four-story apartment building changing their city’s skyscape is going to be able to deal with the change needed to follow crops around the state of California picking, pruning, and weeding? Yeah. We’re fat, comfortable, and self-entitled. Not happening. Not even if the Mexicans all get deported. How many readers of this post are going to move out to the Central Valley and start picking lemons and strawberries once the Mexicans are deported, then move northwards as the growing season moves northward, then back south as the growing season ends in the north? SNORK! Yeah right. That’s for *other* people to do. And I’ll add myself to that number saying “that’s for other people to do”, because I’ve done hard physical work outdoors in 100 degree summer heat before, and at my age have no intention of doing it again.
So yeah, Trump’s about to fuck all of us. Because California grows most of the nation’s fruits and vegetables. Hope you like potatoes, Kansas, ’cause you ain’t gonna see any fruits or vegetables for a *long* time if the Orange Racist Pussy Grabber gets his way.
– Badtux the Former Farmer Penguin
Then there are the Tech Lovers that think any farm job can be mechanised. They may like green strawberries and such mixed in with their purchase, but I really object to unripe fruit at the prices I pay here.
I too have picked and gleaned fields, but that was in my youth and there is no way I could do any of that now.
Some may think it a good thing to get rid of the Mexicans, personally I think the imported workers need a more guaranteed life and income to stay and pick our food, clean our hotel rooms and package our meat.
Middle class, make that any class of Americans, are just not up to the task.
Please get real before the price of food goes up tenfold.
w3ski
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Automation has been the Holy Grail of fruit and vegetable farming since before I was born. The only way it has ever been made to work was by breeding vegetables with extremely tough skins, and they tasted like cardboard. I made a fair amount of money picking fruit as a seasonal summer activity when I was a kid, it definitely isn’t something I’d want to do at my age, especially not in a place that has a 12-month growing season like California.
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Perhaps farm wages will have to go up.
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Then California food becomes uncompetitive with Mexico, Chile, etc. It isn’t like houses, where, if drywallers become more expensive, they can just shrug and raise the prices because imported houses aren’t going to suddenly show up.
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Unless wages south of us go up too, or tariffs are imposed or costs go up slightly. Wages are a small percentage of total cost.
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With decent housing and medical care and schools for their kids.
Yeah, like that’ll happen.
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Is it paranoid of me to see “welfare” and “prison” reform in the not too distant future?
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Peripherally related to your post about worker shortages is this 2013 business section story by the Biz Editor of the left-leaning newspaper chain in Oz. I liked the accompanying vid because he says it all with such a dinky-di Aussie accent. There’s no logic to it, but one of the reasons I love living here is the sound of how people speak.
You’ve posted before about how Amerika lacks the engineering/machine fabrication/skilled parts-maker human skills base to revive manufacturing, amirite? Even before Trumpitler started blowharding about bringing factory jobs back to Slobbok Amerika, people Down Unda knew it couldn’t happen. Just as it can’t with aglabour. Unless they start paying BIG. I’d follow the crops, and do what I could, for $100 an hour! Only then, strawbs would cost $100 a punnet.
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What happened to this 2013 business section story by the Biz Editor of the left-leaning newspaper chain in Oz?
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Your post is excellent. It’s the only rational approach to the situation. We’ll never adopt it.
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