U.S. farm industry groups want President-elect Donald Trump to spare their sector from his promise of mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain heavily dependent on immigrants in the United States illegally.
So far Trump officials have not committed to any exemptions, according to interviews with farm and worker groups and Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan.
Nearly half of the nation’s approximately 2 million farm workers lack legal status, according to the departments of Labor and Agriculture, as well as many dairy and meatpacking workers.
“The only moral abortion is my abortion”.
“The only moral undocumented workers are my undocumented workers”
Notice a pattern here?
They’re not looking at the big picture. When child labor laws get repealed they can hire 10-year-olds at the same cost as undocumented workers. Having 10-year-olds running heavy farm equipment also mitigates abortion bans on the back end.
Don’t forget the blacks. The blacks will be jailed for being black and then they we have slavery with extra steps!
Hey now it won’t just be black folks, all sorts of non white shades of people will be arrested to work the fields against their will. Hell there will probably be some whites in there too, the ones infected by the ‘woke’ can’t be allowed to roam the streets spreading their blasphemy
No, they are. They’ll just use the immigrants they round up as actual slave labor.
U.S. Representative John Duarte, a Republican and fourth-generation farmer in California’s Central Valley, said farms in the area depend on immigrants in the U.S. illegally and that small towns would collapse if those workers were deported. Duarte’s congressional seat is one of a handful of close races where a winner has yet to be declared. Duarte said the Trump administration should pledge that immigrant workers in the country for five years or longer with no criminal record will not be targeted and look at avenues to permanent legal status.
Wow, it’s almost like when faced with the consequences of your profoundly cruel and destructive rhetoric, suddenly some form of tempered, compassionate approach seems like a good idea. 🙄
Assholes.
They’re admitting to using slave-like labor to generate their profits. It goes well beyond rhetoric.
So, I do think what they’re doing is shitty, and the way our government handles undocumented farm workers is shitty and immoral, but I also think it’s not quite right to call the arrangement “slave-like”.
The workers are getting paid, and they’re getting paid enough to make them willing to violate immigration law, and in the case of undocumented migrant workers enough for them to enter the country and travel around it, often returning to the same places to work again.
It is very much exploitative and taking advantage of the worse economic situation elsewhere and their willingness to eschew what we consider basic worker protections.
Equating the arrangement to slavery creates the impression that it might be worth it to crack down hard to alleviate the moral injustice of the entire arrangement, despite the impact it will have on everyone involved.
A better tactic that relieves the gross injustice without hurting the people being wronged or ourselves is to make it easier for farm workers to enter the country in a safe way that allows them to benefit from the protections we believe workers should get, as well as the services we provide, like WIC. Amnesty, a path to legal residency or the citizenship process, and a harsher crackdown on businesses that look to bypass those protections.
Even the workers don’t want the arrangement to end, which tells me we need to bolster the protections they’re missing, not end the system entirely.
Even the workers don’t want the arrangement to end,
Children in coal mines also didn’t want child labour to end.
I understand what you’re saying and under strict definitions it isn’t slavery. By the same token people working in sweatshops in Southeast Asia don’t fit the definition. Yet colloquially the word is still being used. I think because some of us think that freedom and compensation aren’t as much of a line in the sand as it appears at first glance. You could say that slaves in the US were compensated with food and shelter, and that they didn’t feel the deal was bad enough to mount a rebellion. I don’t think we should determine what the lowest standard for labor is by what some people seem to be okay with. Especially if those people aren’t given an easy path to organize. I’m not saying that’s what you’re saying. I’m merely exploring why I use the term.
BTW we have a lawful system for all of this in Canada. Working conditions aren’t great. Farmers and large corporations are happy to exploit workers in ways that Canadians aren’t willing to accept. Even when it comes to natural born citizens, deplorable working conditions have historically been common prior to workers organizing and literally fighting for better.
🤷
Duarte said the Trump administration should pledge that immigrant workers in the country for five years or longer with no criminal record will not be targeted and look at avenues to permanent legal status.
Bwah hah hah! Sure, that’s something that’s going to be coming out of trump’s mouth.
Sorry, no, they steal American jobs and undermine society.
Seriously what is wrong with these people? Are they eight years old?
i hate foreigners and socialism, send me my farm bill subsidy and someone to pick my tomatoes at less than minimum wage
That’s funny.
US farm groups want Trump to spare their workers from deportation - yet they likely still voted for him.
Pro Palestinian groups want to spare Palestinians from genocide - yet they likely helped to support the re-election of someone who has a concrete track-record of being anti-Muslim and heavily pro-Israeli with explicit statements fully supporting Netanyahu’s actions instead of voting for a party who at least meets at the table for peace talks and may be convinced by The People to take a stronger stance in support of peace.
The specific issues are irrelevant (don’t at me about Gaza). It’s how different people understand and act upon issues and politics differently.
Oh wow you said “don’t at me about Gaza” 8 hours ago and no self-aggrandizing dipshit has stopped by yet to uhm ackshually you about how the Democratic Party was literally (read: figuratively) shooting Palestinian children in the face. I’d say that crowd might actually have collectively pulled their heads out of each others’ asses, but I think it’s far more likely that Rostelekom is having an outage today or something.
Folks, here’s what’s happening: fiefdoms and minor lords are the final goal of the GOP. Farmers will have workers who are protected from deportation as long as they are in the farmer’s good graces. Likewise, H1B visas already operate like this - as long as you are loyal and useful you are protected from the sanctioned cruelty of the justice system.
Right wing thought does not care or support democracy. They don’t want people to be free so much as “free”. They want to control other people. It doesn’t matter what the laws are when it comes to themselves - they exist outside that system. They have their own country club system. The right wants petty tyrants.
