Sitasmom............this one's for you - Page 1

SM, you don't want illegals and neither does Georgia so they passed a law.

And here are the unintended consequences:
  "It’s nearly peak harvest time for south Georgia’s vegetable farmers, but they don’t have enough workers to pick the crops. The industry says it’s because of the state’s new immigration reform law.

Normally, Steven Johnson with Echols County's South Georgia Produce would be preparing to ship out big truckloads of cucumbers, squash and peppers to sell across the nation. But, so far he has just a third of the product he should.

He says the rest of the crop is ripe in the field with too few people to pick it.

“It is a complete disaster at the moment with the bill that was signed two weeks ago. Right now we can’t get the help and all the help people have relied on in the past as far as people coming up say from Florida produce and its time for Georgia to kick in… those people are afraid to come into the state right now," says Johnson."

http://www.gpb.org/news/2011/05/27/ga-farms-have-severe-worker-shortage

Besides who is going to mow your lawn and do your yardwork when illegals cannot.  Yep, I know good old red-blooded Americans like used to be the case in the good old days. But where are those red-blooded Americans when it comes to harvesting Georgia's farms?

Careful what you wish for SM..............

Vonissk re:  "I say anyone that doesn't want the illegals here then get your butt out there and do all the hard, menial jobs they do for half the pay"

Well, we know that is not going to happen - armchair advocates like SM, who go into a tizzy about an illegal drunk driver killing someone, get on their high-horse about issues such as illegal immigration and federal spending but are incapable of thinking through the implications of some of the policies they advocate. Not surprising really, since they get most of their information from right wing web-sites who provide fodder for their xenophobia and paranoia!

Check out this guy who was an advocate of the tough Georgia law and now realizes that the chickens have come home to roost:

As a gubernatorial candidate last summer, Georgia Republican Nathan Deal boasted of having backed (as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives) measures to bar undocumented immigrants from federal health care, and public colleges. He supported a bill that, starting July 1, will become one of America's most punitive state immigration laws. And now he has released a report indicating that Georgia's largest industry, agriculture, suddenly has 11,000 openings — which, he suggested, should be filled with some of the state's 100,000 ex-convicts, about 25% of whom are unemployed.

Here is what one of his backers has to say:

Predictably, farmers have coldly received Deal's suggestion that non-violent ex-offenders be hired. "Let them in the governor's mansion, to be cooks," sixth-generation blackberry farmer Gary Paulk says, "and I'll let them on my farm. I want my family to be as safe as the governor's."

The law is already putting historically-business minded Republicans in a bind. Paulk, for instance, chaired Deal's gubernatorial campaign effort in Irwin County, in Southeast Georgia. He overlooked Deal's backing of the law. "It's appalling, because they didn't think through the implications, at the farm level," he says. "It's like a witch hunt that tells immigrants: 'we want you gone.'"

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079542,00.html

Apparently, North Carolina was going to go the same route but seeing what has happened in Georgia, they want to exempt illegals who are farm workers from the law! So much for principle!!

You don't really expect a response from her, do you? LOL

Mystere, the reason that SM pulls the disappearing act is because just about all that she posts is what she gets from right wing websites.

Present an argument against what she posts and unless the response appears on one of those websites, she does not know what to say - and so she disappears.

One of the standard bits of b-s on these websites are that Democrats are responsible for the deficits - including when Bush was in office for eight years because the Democrats controlled Congress - which of course, they did not except for the last two years when Bush still had veto power. But SM repeats this ad nauseum. So I countered it with actual facts and figures on the national debt under each president since Carter - and there was silence!

I agree with vonissk...make criminals work..we spend on average $36,000 a year per prisoner..why not have them earn that by working in fields, working in production line...seems like China figured it out..most of the plastic McD's toys are made my prisoners..why not do that here?

we loose more $ in courts, jails, hospitals, law enforcement lives, personal properties than what we loose on farms and costs of product supplies....

 Just the other day we had to write off a hospital bill of 15K for someone names Jose (last name),  Jose (first name) whose DOB was 5/5/1955 (now who ever even put that info down was an idiot but services could not have been refused)..and this happens daily and hospitals loose millions of $ in write offs because illegals cannot be tracked, billed, or found....just the other day we had someone in ER who wrecked and when RN pulled his valet he had  3 DL , 2 SS# cards, multiple credit cards with different names...do you think he was legal, or was going to pay his bill?....someone has to eat it...and it's people with insurance, self paid people who are barely making ends meet..while we cater to people who have no business being here..

I expect our over spoiled teenage kids to do this work. They used to back in the day. Want new clothes and shoes for school? Get out there and harvest all summer. Lazy ass brats are sittin' around smokin' pot and playing video games anyway! Summer break has a reason behind it does it not?

LF - reading the article the problem is more that the farmers don't want the criminals on their property.  That's what I got from the one farmer quoted who said he did not feel it would be a safe situation for his family.

I agree along the lines of 4Pack though go a step further and say start pooling from those people currently drawing wellfare checks.

I'm honored!

Try getting the facts first.........LOL