The Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2021, like another, similarly named bill in 2019, is about anything but “modernization.” Currently being pushed by Congressional Democrats and some select Republicans, the bill would “prop up a low-tech, stoop-labor farming sector” with cheap foreign labor. Neil Munro at Breitbart News describes it this way:
The Democrats’ bill is a very crude political deal: It provides endless cheap labor to agricultural investors in exchange for quickly delivering millions of votes to Democratic politicians. The Democrats get their voters via a fast-track amnesty for at least 1 million farm laborers — plus their spouses and children — and through the future conversion of H-2A workers into American voters.
The bill is supported by the usual pro-immigration forces in this country, including FWD.us, the lobbying group created by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and others, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who just happens to be largest owner of farmland in the United States.
Ironically, these investors, who favor high-tech solutions in other areas of the U.S. economy, for the agricultural sector are pushing for the importation of more and more low-skilled, third-world workers. This will only make it easier for farms and agribusinesses to avoid modernizing and mechanizing the industry. The entire scheme is short-sighted, of course. While those employers may enjoy a windfall of profits in the short run, in the long run, they will lose out to their European competitors, who are modernizing at a rapid clip, and American agriculture will suffer.
Why the difference? The answer is political. Bringing in, say, a million farmworkers and their family members from abroad and giving them a fast track to citizenship is a guaranteed win for the Democrats and a major step toward their goal of permanent electoral dominance. Combines and robots can’t vote, so who needs ’em?
For more, see Breitbart News.