Here’s an article that’ll make you shed some tears…

SAN FRANCISCO — Fruit rotting in fields, unmilked cows suffering in barns, shuttered farmhouses — growers are painting a bleak picture of their industry under new federal regulations that pressure employers to fire illegal immigrants.

Picture the vast fields of American farms, wasted produce and bloated cows. The suffering. The pain. Old farm buildings, once full of life, now empty shells of what was once a booming industry. Rusted out equipment, creaky doors…

Gimme a break. Roll your eyes and yawn. And consider these stories to be well thought out scripted acts.

Although other industries hire workers without proper authorization, growers acknowledge they make up a majority of farmhands in any field. After the Bush administration announced that employers who knowingly keep undocumented workers will be held liable, many growers said their businesses would be hard hit.

Particularly vulnerable would be fruit operations that are now hiring thousands of seasonal workers in preparation for the peak harvest months of July through September, they said. The measure is to take effect in mid-September.

Andy Casado is a California farm labor contractor with nearly 800 workers. He also grows and packs fruit himself.

“I’m guessing 80, 90 percent of the (agricultural) workforce is illegal,” he said. “Implementing this rule will be catastrophic.”

Oh puleeze. Stop it already with the damn drama and bullshit. HIRE AMERICANS. Let’s give them a chance to save this industry from itself. You know, I get sick and tired of hearing all these sap stories about catastrophic disasters in this industry. The world, and economy, won’t collapse because Americans are offered, and accept, these agriculture jobs. Yes it means paying them more than the illegals…so what?? What might happen, as we’re constantly threatened, the price of grapes and lettuce and other produce will increase. Pfft. It doesn’t have to be this way…but the margins of profit are all that matters here. We have choices.

The pronouncement doesn’t change the law, it just adds a promise of enforcement that alters the odds of the gamble farmers take whenever they hire a new worker, said Howard Rosenberg, a farm labor management and policy specialist at UC Berkeley’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

The odds? Gamble? Risk? Yea right…it’s a cold calculated risk that is well thought out, well planned for, insured for and don’t think for two seconds these agriculture houses are put off over the new rules.

Until now, employers who received one of the approximately 130,000 letters sent by the Social Security Administration telling them a worker’s identification number didn’t match government records didn’t fire the employee, as the discrepancy could result from a misprint or a woman’s failure to inform the government of her new married name.

Now these so-called “no-match” letters will be accompanied by a letter from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reminding employers of their obligations under immigration law.

Farmers will now ask the employee to fix the discrepancy. If the difference isn’t explained in three months, the employer must fire the worker or face criminal liability.

…and how long is the harvest season? Just short enough where these rules will have NO, ZERO, effect. It’s almost perfect. Almost. By the time a business gets the letters and does the cross checking, the illegals will have come and gone.

Think tanks that oppose illegal immigration praised the move, hoping it will turn off the job magnet that has attracted new immigrants. Other vocal opponents of illegal immigration, such as Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, said his optimism was tempered by a wait-and-see attitude.

“It’s not that we don’t trust them, it’s just that, well, we don’t trust them,” he said of the Bush administration. “It seems to me that many of these tough-on-illegal-alien programs have existed for some time, and this may simply be cover for the White House to bring back their amnesty push next year.”

Tom is right. The rules and laws are already there. Businesses and government have come together to warp the rules, twist the laws to create loophole after loophole…and to put enforcement on the back burner. Much effort has gone to short staffing the agencies charged with overseeing compliance; and the borders are still wide open. Federal, state and local efforts to welcome illegals are everywhere. Meanwhile, Americans just sit back and watch, in shock and little awe. Some of us are pissed off though.

“We’re going to face firing employees whether the documents are wrong or right with no one to fill those positions,” said Allen Carnes, president of Winter Garden Produce in Uvalde, Texas.

Carnes said he’s already suffered worker shortages during the past few years because of tightened border security.

Steve Pringle, legislative director for the Texas Farm Bureau, said the administration’s move forces employers into an impossible position.

“Either you obey the law and you watch your crop rot in the fields or you attempt to try to get the crop out and run the risk of being hit by the federal government,” he said.

Obeying laws, set forth by the government, is the ethical and honest thing to do. But it’s really not about law and order. The business lobby and owners are forcing Americans to pay for this cheap labor in SO many other areas: welfare and housing, health care, education; the crime levels are higher where illegals reside; the culture of the communities where they live is much worse than other areas.

The costs of keeping these illegals in the US, working on OUR lands, far outweighs the profits made by these businesses.
We have choices.

Is it worth it? To save a few pennies on the produce we buy, over the BILLIONS in taxes we pay, from income from jobs WE work at? Remember, 90% of these illegals pay NO income tax, NO social security tax, no taxes period. Those of us who do pay into the system are paying a very high price, to save those few pennies.

Choices? In every town and city in this country, there are local farms and farmers markets we can purchase our goods from. Buy locally; buy from locally owned farms, not the supermarkets. We have several little farms in my area and I ALWAYS get my fruit and veggies from these places. Americans work these farms and yes, I pay more for the goods. Pennies more…But it’s worth it. Americans are worth it.