The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“There may be a reason why no one wants to solve the immigration problem: Politically, the problem is far more useful than a solution.
“Washington has not passed a single major piece of immigration legislation into law since 1986, with the immigration reform and control act. . . .
“A bill introduced in Congress in 2019, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, would have relieved the problems faced by both undocumented workers and growers in desperate need of their labor, but the bill died somewhere in the congressional ether earlier this year. . . . According to the latest data from the Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey, 7 in 10 farmworkers were born in Mexico or Central America. Half lack legal status. . . . Those with extremist views who want to deport all immigrants here illegally should be careful about what they wish for. Without these immigrants, America’s agricultural economy would crash to a halt, or, as in the case of those pear farmers, end in a dull thud.
“Yet despite those hundreds of thousands of laborers, farmers still struggle to find enough workers to plant, tend and pick their crops.
“Another reason why this happens: Remaining here year-round, migrant farmworkers gravitate toward more stable occupations like construction and landscaping, and stay there.
“Children of farmworkers who arrived decades ago have little interest in fieldwork, leaving much of the vital labor to aging elders. . . . Some say farmers should pay higher wages, . . . The idea isn’t as easy as it sounds. Farmers can only pay what the commodities market will bear. Pay more than the going rate for a product and you’ll go out of business. . . .
Farmers are adapting, exchanging hand-picked crops like, say, olives, for those that are machine-harvested and require fewer workers.
“You can’t do that with the more delicate fruits and veggies. . . .
“Or maybe the problem is politically more useful than the solution, not that the ones whining about it will admit it. It’s particularly so for Republicans. They use it to gin up fear and even prejudice to rally their constituents. . . . Immigration reform benefits everyone but the sad fact is, we seem to be completely incapable of effectively dealing with the problem because, apparently, we do.” — The Immigration Problem That No One Wants to Solve, Huffpost, Bruce Maiman, 5/16/23 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: Maiman’s article begins with the claim that there hasn’t been a major piece of immigration legislation since 1986. To the contrary, two major immigration bills passed in 1990 and 1996. This error suggests caution in evaluating the credibility of this author’s other claims. His main viewpoint is a conspiracy theory which holds that Republicans want no solution to illegal immigration because the status quo helps them politically. Yet one more easily say that Democrats favor the status quo of virtually open border because they view illegal aliens, after amnesty, as a huge voting bloc for them. Democratic strategist Robert Creamer has explicitly endorsed this gambit for power.
He maintains that he wants reform, but one “reform” he suggests, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, is pure status quo. Its key provision was to give mass amnesty to illegal aliens. By rewarding lawbreaking such a proposal only encourages it to continue. At the same time, this and similar legislation would discourage the mechanization that could end much of our reliance on back-breaking labor to bring in our crops. Maiman acknowledges this possibility but dismisses it as being impractical. This dismissal reminds one of the claim long ago that we had to have slaves to produce cotton. Subsequently, we mechanized production of that crop.
Maiman doesn’t think we can do so with “delicate fruits and veggies.” Evidently, he’s unaware of technological advances in those areas. With genuine reform we could hurry up those advances. Once again, this reform would consist of curtailing illegal farm labor. Doing so too quickly probably would cause problems. But we could give growers time to phase in new technologies. Most helpful would be tax credits to encourage their installment. In the meantime, contrary to Maiman, higher wages for farmworkers might help to augment the labor supply. Higher wages won’t necessarily price growers out of the market.
We constantly hear than Americans don’t like to do farm work, a least with current wages and conditions, Be that as it may, illegal aliens don’t like to do it either, and they will do something else of they can find the opportunity, as Maiman concedes. The status quo means that as illegal farmworkers move on, we replace them with new border crossers—and on and on the cycle continues. It’s time for real reform to break the cycle.