What happens when you pass oppressive anti-immigration laws? You get what you wish for.

[Mac1337]

Chakravartin wrote:
[quote=Dakota]
[quote=Chakravartin]
Citizens and documented laborers are asking for twice as much money and doing half the work of their undocumented counterparts.

This usually happens when you get paid every week, have healthcare and your heating bills are paid for and have a roll of food stamps in your pocket. Beggars can be choosy after all.
Yes, let's all assume that everyone in this country has full health insurance and gets paid millions of dollars every year by the government.
That is not what I said. I asked a simple question. How many unemployed live in Alabama and what is their price for taking those jobs? If they balk, they must have a better deal not working. Tell me which part you disagree with.

[cbelt3]

Dakota- Please go read some Steinbeck, or better yet, go work on a farm during harvesting season, and then proceed to share your actual wisdom. You're proposing a Soviet-style "Hero Project". While it sort of worked with the CCC during the Great Depression, the likelihood of unmanageable unrest is high at this time.

[Black]

cbelt3 wrote:
Dakota- Please go read some Steinbeck,

LOL!

[Mac1337]

cbelt3 wrote:
Dakota- Please go read some Steinbeck, or better yet, go work on a farm during harvesting season, and then proceed to share your actual wisdom. You're proposing a Soviet-style "Hero Project". While it sort of worked with the CCC during the Great Depression, the likelihood of unmanageable unrest is high at this time.

What you are saying is that you need a permanent underclass to pick your food because as soon as they are legalized you can say the same thing about them. The work is too hard. Besides, aren't you the one who constantly posts here about whiners complaining about factory work and how hard you had it. Make up your mind or apologize to me as quickly as you apologize to everybody else here.

[OWC Jamie]

They tried prisoners picking stuff in Georgia.
From what I've read the farmers don't want the bums out in the field. Most did more damage to the crop than it was worth.

Believe it or not picking (some) vegetables at high speed without doing any damage is an acquired skill. These people aren't totally worthless/skill-less. The farmers are losing skilled workers. It's NOT something just anybody is capable of or willing to do. It's mindless repetitious work that has to be done well. Not just done.
20 minutes is my limit for picking string beans. Course, I probably do it wrong.

[cbelt3]

Nope. What I'm saying is that the Urban unemployed Americans would find it difficult to enter into a migrant farm worker lifestyle, and the mechanization of farm work in the 20th century depopulated farming towns who used to have sufficient labor for their own harvests, and produced a demand for migrant workers.

And that your Stalinesque 'solutions' are nothing more than talking points for fools.

[kj]

Uh, sorry, but Dakota's right on this one. kj.

[Spock]

kj wrote:
Uh, sorry, but Dakota's right on this one. kj.

*Enters second idiot, stage right.

[cbelt3]

now, be nice. kj, feel free to 'splain.

How would you (in an organized fashion)
1- Set up transportation to bring unemployed urban Alabamians to various rural areas at 5 AM, and take them home at 8 PM ?
2- Provide food and sanitation for these workers.
3- Provide training and a safe working environment for these workers.
4- Provide workman's comp insurance, a living wage, etc. for these workers.

etcetera.

Migrant farm labor has always been a dirty little secret of Cheap American Food.

[August West]

now, be nice. kj, feel free to 'splain.

All practical questions. It's so hard to get people, including myself, to recognize the difference between theory and practice. I suppose I must give some sort of kudos to engineers, ugh.