Tom Homan means business
He does indeed:
Watch Dana Bash do a double-take in shock and horror as Tom Homan explains to her that an illegal alien doesn’t have to be convicted of a serious crime to face deportation.
Amazing stuff. pic.twitter.com/QdNAgOhyEe
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 21, 2025
What he’s saying there, among other things, is that the policies of “sanctuary cities” will almost inevitably cause more non-violent, low-profile illegal immigrants to be arrested and deported rather than fewer. It’s a reminder to the authorities in those cities that cooperating by allowing ICE to arrest criminal illegal aliens in prisons will be to everyone’s benefit. Will the mayors comply, or not?
Homan doesn’t mince words. He’s no diplomat; that’s for sure. And his plain talk is a reminder of how seldom we hear it these days, and how much the Overton Window has moved in the last decade or two on the subject of illegal aliens, a term I purposely use because it’s the old-fashioned legal phrase. “Undocumented”? He’s not having it. For much of the US, probably the majority of its citizens, his unvarnished speech is a relief. To others, it’s a horror – describing exactly the sort of thing they feared about the possibility of a Trump victory.
I live in the sanctuary city of Los Angeles. I have used the phrase “illegal alien” for many years now. Ignorance of basic language and the rule of law has had devastating consequences.
Sharon W (3:34 pm) has “used the phrase ‘illegal alien’ for many years now,” as have I, except on those occasions when I have referred to them in the aggregate as simply “invaders”. Let’s hear for plain language, eh?
Tom Homan needs elocution lessons. I don’t mind the plain talk at all. I would appreciate plain speaking.
Why can’t everyone sound like me?
Albert Mehrabian’s “7-38-55 Rule” – 7% verbal (words used), 38% vocal (tone, pitch, and inflection), and 55% nonverbal (body language, facial expressions, etc.).
I suspect that a huge number of non-English speaking illegal aliens understand him perfectly…
ICE Enforcement: 308 Arrests in Trump’s First Days
Plain as day – ‘worst first‘…
The US is already a de facto English/Spanish country.
The Trump/Homan “Remain in Mexico” line means no illegals going North into the USA: FROM ANYWHERE.
We’ll still get 400,000 or more H1B visa holders yearly, per yesterday’s Wall St. Journal story, most from India because they are techies which Facebook and Amazon, etc., and all tech businesses, always need more of.
It is not only a federal crime to assist an illegal in avoiding apprehension, it is a federal crime to knowingly employ illegals.
“The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), enacted on September 30, 1996, added a new 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(3)(A) which makes it an offense for any person, during any 12-month period, to knowingly hire at least 10 individuals with actual knowledge that these individuals are unauthorized aliens. The basic statutory maximum penalty for violating 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(i) and (v)(I) (alien smuggling and conspiracy) is a fine under title 18, imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or both.”
Here’s hoping that over the next 4 yrs. Homan ‘decorates’ his teepee with many, many scalps.
Go after the employers. End all benefits. Especially birthright citizenship if either parent is an illegal immigrant. No jobs + no benefits = self-deportation.
@Geoffrey:it is a federal crime to knowingly employ illegals…. Go after the employers.
It is against Federal law to check legal status BEFORE hiring someone. Employers have no choice but to hire illegals because they are not allowed to check who is illegal or not before hiring. It is very difficult to prove that an employer deliberately and knowingly hired illegals, but they may have emails or other records that indicate they have done so.
This is the most important thing people need to understand about illegal immigration, that the laws are designed to do nothing to prevent them working. In the vast majority of cases an employer who has hired an illegal has not broken the law.
@Cicero: techies which Facebook and Amazon, etc., and all tech businesses, always need more of.
Then they should pay more and hire Americans. There are many professions that we “need more of”, medical doctors, for example, and if there were massive hiring of medical doctors as H1-Bs that would lower salaries for American doctors and make it harder for Americans wanting to be doctors to get their foot in the door. It is the same for American tech workers.
Most of the tech H1-Bs are low-level positions. Not genius coders, but the kind of people who, if American, would be just starting out their careers. As it is, American workers are shoved aside in favor of foreigners who might need to leave the country if they make their boss unhappy.
We should careful parroting propaganda like “we need these people”. At any rate, most of the tech work can be done remote: if you must employ them, why not have them stay in India or wherever? There is no reason to bring them here and encourage their relatives’ chain immigration, depressing wages for whatever it is the relatives do–unless depressing American wages is the goal, which for the big players of course it is.
After the great immigration deal in 1986, it was common to see INS agents raid agricultural plants in our state and arrest and deport some/most of the workers at a plant. I happened to be at a place where this “raid” was taking place and asked the manager what he was going to do. He just smiled and said most of them would be back in a month with new fake ids. This was around 1987/88.
So this isn’t unprecedented by any means. But this isn’t 1988 either.
What is a problem in this area is the need for temporary, seasonal ag workers and we need a robust H2A program. These jobs won’t/can’t be met in the traditional ways, where migrant workers followed the harvest season from the southern states and slowly worked their way north.
@Brian E:These jobs won’t/can’t be met in the traditional ways,
They would if they were paid enough. Warren Buffet would pick your asparagus if he was paid enough.
He just smiled and said most of them would be back in a month with new fake ids.
Employers have very little latitude to reject documents. I was responsible for E-Verify implementation at a small business for a while (we were too small to have a real HR team), and I came away so unimpressed by what it actually does to stop people from working illegally, which is as near to nothing as its designers could come. But you do get audited to make sure you’re not discriminating when you hire…
The use of E-Verify comes with explicit permission to employ someone whose employment eligibility cannot be confirmed, though you are given the legal option to fire them–someone who’s already been employed by you for weeks or months at the point of final non-confirmation.
My blood pressure goes up whenever a conservative commentator says “mandatory E-Verify”. That is my red flag for “has not done minimal research”.
” …illegal aliens, a term I purposely use because it’s the old-fashioned legal phrase.”
At one time Chuck Schumer would have agreed with you and Tom Holman.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1078496926058700800
(Hat tip Instapundit)
Niketas, as to asparagus or other specialty crops, you might find enough workers for a six week-two month harvest season. I don’t know how it works in the Imperial Valley or areas down south– maybe with multiple growing seasons they could make it work.
Not sure how we could have a robust apple industry without temporary workers. It’s a $2 billion industry and we are the leading producer of apples in the country.
Farmers already have to pay above the state’s minimum wage plus the costs of bringing the workers from their home country. I don’t know how many farmers still hire illegals under the table, but this is one of the reasons why I don’t trust Republicans any more than Democrats when it comes to illegal immigration.
Tom Homan is exactly the kind of man I want and admire in law enforcement. No nonsense, straightforward, get the job done.
He reminds me of the sheriff of the town I grew up in. Eph (Ephraim) Holton was his name. He was a big man who was fair, plain spoken, and uncompromising about right and wrong. No one messed with him.
I think these sanctuary city/state advocates are in for a surprise. It’ll take some time, but Homan is a bulldog and will stay on it.
@Brian E:Not sure how we could have a robust apple industry without temporary workers.
By all means hire temporary workers; but it won’t kill orchardists to hire Americans like the rest of us have to. I myself picked apples once upon a time as temporary worker, and went to school with (white) kids whose families did it for a living, in the 80s and 90s.
Farmers already have to pay above the state’s minimum wage
So do most businesses. When I was hiring health care analysts and software engineers I had to offer every one of them substantially more than state minimum wage… It won’t kill farmers, who have a lot of things rigged in their favor, but let’s not open up the Ag can of worms.
Niketas, I had to smile when you lumped health care analysts, software engineers and apple pickers together. I hope you were paying the former professionals more than minimum wage!
Why does it matter that our ag products are competitive price wise? Because 1/4 of our apple production is exported and has to compete with countries that subsidize their own ag producers (let’s not get into whether our ag producers are also subsidized). We want exports.
I not going to report your for truancy, but shouldn’t you have been in school instead of working in the orchards? 🙂
I don’t know any orchardists, but I suspect we would be hard pressed to find enough temporary workers who would do that job even for $16.34/ hr. As you know, it’s hard work!
I’m partial to immigrants from Mexico, as I’ve seen found them to be entrepreneurial, ambitious and hard workers.
Cost shifting. The Third Man.
@Brian E: I hope you were paying the former professionals more than minimum wage!
Why? Every business wants to keep its costs low. Why do laptop class workers filling in spreadsheets deserve more money than people who do hard physical labor to feed people? It’s because “deserve” has nothing to do with it. It’s about supply and demand. What you are proposing with the ag workers and what goes on with the H1Bs is that the industry no like paying that price for labor, and they want the rules changed so they can have privileged access to a large pool of labor willing to work for less and so drop the market price.
Why does it matter that our ag products are competitive price wise?
Every sector of the economy can say this Brian, but they can’t all have the game rigged in their favor because rigging the game is zero sum. You can plead for the poor farmers who need foreign helots to keep their costs low to be “competitive”, and I can plead for the poor tech companies who need foreign helots to keep THEIR costs low to be “competitive”…
but we can’t all have our way.
I not going to report your for truancy, but shouldn’t you have been in school instead of working in the orchards?
I didn’t have to miss school for what I was doing. I was not trying to make a living at the work.
I suspect we would be hard pressed to find enough temporary workers who would do that job even for $16.34/ hr. As you know, it’s hard work!
I know lots of people who did harder seasonal work than that in Alaska, and it was because they were getting paid enough to make it worth their while. College students and people fresh out of college, but also trades like electricians. I would pick apples now if I were offered enough, and so would you.
I’m partial to immigrants from Mexico, as I’ve seen found them to be entrepreneurial, ambitious and hard workers.
Yeah, mostly they’re nice people, but my country is America and I think Americans should live here and do our work. Plenty of Americans are also entrepreneurial, ambitious and hard workers.
Niketas Choniates on January 22, 2025 at 6:57 pm
“… a conservative commentator says “mandatory E-Verify”…”
That would have been me, so thank you for your clarifying explanations and cautions.
Certainly there is little reason that we can’t make whatever ag support or tech support we need that is not available from domestic employees to be made legal and controlled.
I could favor visas for foreign employees to come here (for say 4 or 6 years?) to gain skills, education, experience that they then take back home to help build up their local economies. Human capital is the major contributor to prosperity in our modern world. The program could also encourage Americans to go to those countries to help them build up their capabilities – I would think a tour or two in international employment would make you a more valuable employee here as well. [RTF and others have mentioned having international employment opportunities and exposure and they seem to have generally benefited from it.]
Farmers are facing a shortage of workers and are forced to rely on H2A migrants to meet the demand. One of the problems is when the fruit is ready to harvest, it’s ready for everyone (yes there is some variation from Yakima and moving north to Wenatchee/Chelan). Washington farmers employ over 100,000 H2A migrant workers and it is expensive. They have to provide transportation from Mexico, housing and wages that are closer to $20/hour.
Read more at: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/article287013755.html#storylink=cpy
‘Gone for good.’ U.S. workers flee farms, leaving WA growers struggling under old rules
Read more at: https://www.tricityherald.com/news/local/article287013755.html#storylink=cpy
When I said I was partial to Mexican immigrants, I’m talking about American citizens of Mexican descent– many of which are second generation citizens.
If we are going to realize Trump’s vision of a dynamically growing American economy, we are going to need immigrants. Yes we want these to be legal immigrants– but there aren’t enough American workers to fill these new potential jobs. Remember when 4% unemployment was considered “full employment”. We’ve been at or near 4% (or below). I don’t know what the lower limit is, but I suspect it’s not much below that number.
We need a labor pool to draw from. One of the many problems with what Biden did by opening the border to flood the country with low skilled labor is depressing that labor market. We need a variety of skill levels and a more balanced immigration policy. But we can’t ignore that we will continue to need immigrant labor.
“400,000 or more H1B visa holders yearly, ”
The other visa programs are trouble for America, too.
Students here on visas … Overstay, even drop out, and just disappear.
Workers under other visa categories — non H1B — disappear.
Many working at tourist attractions, resorts. They disappear.
Fake ID’s are a huge problem.
…
My career was software engineer.
I had to take an H1B import from India into my team at Motorola a couple times.
1st one: Nice guy, but most definitely not impressive. My job was harder, having to train him, double check, & even rewrite his software.
His wife was, from what I overheard, an overbearing driver.
The whole thing was a bad experience.
Nobody brings in Africans to pick cotton anymore. That process is automated, if it’s even grown in the US anymore.
Maybe the ag industry needs to invent a better way to harvest apples and asparagus. Even if the feds had to finance Elon to invent picking machines, it would be better than having these invaders.
ICE raids are not making some illegals very happy:
Jaw-dropping outburst of Haitian migrant as ICE raids ramp up around the country after Trump takes office
@Brian E:Farmers are facing a shortage of workers
Propaganda. If they paid more, there’d be no shortage, Econ 101. Every sector of the economy claims that labor is too expensive and every business wants to cut costs, but they can’t all have special rules.
Farmers want to socialize their costs and individualize their benefits just like everyone else does, there’s nothing special about that which needs a government program to import helots, and there’s nothing special about farmers that entitles them to pay no more than minimum wage. The rest of us have to live with market forces too.
Nobody brings in Africans to pick cotton anymore. That process is automated, if it’s even grown in the US anymore.
==
IIRC, cotton production in this country began to decline rapidly around about 1917 and had disappeared almost entirely by 1957. Raphael Warnock’s chuffering about his mother picking cotton is something you should take with a hunk of rock salt.
Farmers are facing a shortage of workers and are forced to rely on H2A migrants to meet the demand.
==
They would benefit if they took land out of production, automated processes, and / or changed their crop mix if market prices will not cover costs.
==
A. Dismantle what remains of the web of government production controls and subsidies in the agricultural sector.
==
B. Determine via methods of environmental science the quantum of public freshwater it is prudent to distribute for consumption in a season and then do so by multiple price auctions.
==
C. Reduce property tax rates on arable land, pasture, and woodland.
==
D. Enact countervaling tariffs on the produce of countries which subsidize their agricultural sector.
Temporary residency permits are properly granted to accredited employees of foreign governments (and their dependents), authentic refugees (and their dependents); and students, teachers, and their dependents. And that is it. Educational visas should be distributed to schools which wish to recruit from abroad via multiple price auctions with the school, not the recruit, the bidder. If the stock of lawful temporary residents in your country exceeds 0.4% of the total, you should have a moratorium on the distribution of educational visas.
==
The civil status of children born in this country to temporary residents should be ‘temporary resident’.
Niketas, You think the Herald news story is propaganda?
It’s not.
I think you don’t understand the cost of the H2A program. It would be cheaper to hire local labor. To qualify for the H2A program, farmers must first post the job with the employment security office and only after 50% of the contract time frame has passed can they hire a H2A migrant worker.
Here’s some of the costs associated with hiring a H2A migrant worker:
Labor Certification: Processing sole employers–$100 application fee, plus $10 per certified worker (not to exceed $1000).
H-2A Visa Application: Consulate fee– $190 per worker (worker must be reimbursed in first paycheck).
H-2A Visa Application: Border stamp fee– $6 per worker.
H-2A Visa Application: Agent fees– Approximately $100 per worker.
Transportation: Transport from home country to work site– $400 to $650 per worker (cost varies depending on the country of origin).
Transportation: Weekly travel to and from a grocery store– Cost varies.
Miscellaneous Costs: Association fees if applicable– $200.
Miscellaneous Costs: Housing and livable fittings– Approximately $9,000 to $13,000 per worker.
This is on top of the wages paid. Since workers are paid by the bin, I think a formula is used to calculate the per hour wage which is above minimum wages.
It’s a mistake to equate the issues with the H2A and H1B visa programs.
Here’s the USDA website on the program:
https://www.farmers.gov/working-with-us/h2a-visa-program
@ Niketas > “If they paid more, there’d be no shortage, Econ 101.”
Indeed.
BUT if they (farmers, meat packers, lawn services, construction crews, etc etc etc) (Democrat and Republican and whatever) hired LEGAL workers, especially actual American citizens, they would also have to pay not only minimum wage, but also unemployment insurance, Social Security, health insurance, and whatever else the government has stacked on to “enable people to work with dignity” or “make a living wage” or whatever the excuses are.
(Yes, some do pay into these accounts for illegals with fake ID, but it’s a sham to keep feds at bay.)
(And, yes, the H-whatevers and the other “rules waived” migrants may be “legal,” but they are in the intermediate zone between outright illegals and genuine legals; everything gets complicated.)
I’m not saying any of those benefits should be repealed, but if a party is going to virtue signal with legislation, they ought to at least follow-through and make sure it’s fairly implemented.
Hiring illegals under the table reduces those costs; even if there are others as noted, such as paying for them to come from wherever and sending them back (didn’t we used to do that with openly legal workers anyway?), the employers still seem to net out better than paying citizens the legally mandated wages and benefits, or (economically speaking) they wouldn’t do it.
However, what we all know, and nobody is putting up front, is that the main benefit of having serfs is that they can’t complain to the King about their treatment.
(Reference the stories about the use of minors, often young children, on meat-packing floors doing blatantly illegal jobs, because they and/or their parents are NOT citizens and can’t blow the whistle on the companies.)
Seems to me, we went through all of that in the sixties with Cesar Chavez and his Grape Boycotts, enthusiastically supported by the Democrats of the day, who are now the party undercutting all the advances gained by that movement.
There is even a Cesar Chavez Day coming up in March, declared by President Obama.
This 2014 post covers the UFW controversies.
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/cesar-chavezs-rabid-opposition-to-illegal-immigration-not-covered-in-new-movie-6643666
Here’s a radical idea:
==
A. Make it so that recruitment and promotion in public employment is regulated by examinations. There might be status considerations which would regulate your eligibility to take the examination, but these would seldom consist of having completed a particular degree program. Make these examinations timely. Once you have notice of a vacancy, the examination is held within sixty days.
==
B. Apply the foregoing to private natural monpolies.
==
C. Debar language in private collective bargaining agreements which requires or promotes hiring and promotion according to ascribed traits. End collective bargaining in the public sector entirely.
==
D. Define as tortious certain actions in workplaces which map to common crimes like harassment and extortion. Perpetrators would be liable and, in some circumstances, supervisors, managers, and the corporation itself.
==
E. Grant public sector employees automatic post termination reviews wherein they could present a case that their supervisor or manager was running a race-patronage scheme which generated their dismissal. The burden of proof would be on the complaining employee. A decision in favor of the employee and he’d be granted an indemnity and the the matter would be referred to an ombudsman who could bring charges contra the offending supervisors / managers to secure their dismissal and debarment from public employment.
==
F. Eliminate employment discrimination law. Allow private employers to hire, promote, demote, and fire according to their lights.
==
Niketas, You think the Herald news story is propaganda?
==
Of course it is. Buy my bridge.
Art Deco,
While farmers rotate crops based on a variety of issues including market prices, fruit industry isn’t as simple. Once an orchard is planted it takes 4 to 5 years before you begin harvesting– so the initial investment is high before you begin receiving a return.
The climate conditions for this type of crop is ideal in this part of the state. Some of the land wouldn’t be suitable for other types of crops based on topography.
This is one of the largest export crops in Washington state, exceeded only by potatoes, seafood and wheat. It’s important to the state’s economy.
@Brian E:You think the Herald news story is propaganda?
Calling the reluctance to pay the market-clearing price for labor a “shortage” instead of “we don’t want to pay higher wages” is propaganda. Even if it appears in the newspaper.
It would be cheaper to hire local labor.
It would not, because you’d have to pay more to attract enough local labor, that’s why you’re claiming there’s a shortage. Your narrative here is logically contradictory.
Farmers don’t throw money away any more than anyone else does. The H2A program is cheaper and easier than paying the market-clearing wage, or farmers wouldn’t be paying for it and lobbying for it–unless they are terrible businessmen who just flush money down the toilet, which largely they are not.
Every business can say the same thing as the farmers, but every business cannot get the rules rigged in their favor.
Once an orchard is planted it takes 4 to 5 years before you begin harvesting…The climate conditions for this type of crop is ideal in this part of the state… It’s important to the state’s economy.
No other sector requires years of investment before generating revenue? No other sector is important to the state’s economy? No other sector finds the physical conditions of Washington important for their business? Once again, farmers are not special. The rest of us have to learn to live with market forces and so can farmers.
I think there is a misconception that farmers want to use H2A migrant workers to save money.
Finding qualified seasonal workers is a problem. Harvesting jobs only last a few months.
As I pointed out from the USDA website on the costs of hiring a H2A migrant laborer, they are significant.
If anyone is interested in facts about the issue, here is a website by a company that provides H2A migrant workers.
https://awlabor.com/guide-to-housing-wage-transportation-and-food-requirements-for-h-2a-visas/
@AesopFan:Yes, some do pay into these accounts for illegals with fake ID,
Most of the time this is what happens. It’s very difficult to pay out large sums of money without someone reporting it to the IRS, the bank if no one else. You can’t have large sums of money going out the door with no label on it, and a business that clearly must employ a lot of people without a payroll that looks right, and paying the right amount of payroll taxes and other government-mandated things, is a business that is raising red flags in government systems.
Federal and state governments are more than happy to collect Social Security and other items from illegal aliens, which is why it is illegal for an employer to check if someone is illegal before actually hiring them, and also why E-Verify allows you to continue to employ someone who has had a final non-confirmation of employment eligibility.
The IRS has been keeping track of all the fake and illegitimately used SSNs for quite a long time now. They don’t often confuse you for the illegal using your SSN, but I have known people that it happened to. And I have also worked at a big company where I tracked how many people were a) using bogus SSNs, b) using multiple SSNs, c) sharing SSNs. There were a lot of them, and all these SSNs came to us through a state government system.
@Brian E:Finding qualified seasonal workers is a problem.
Solvable by paying more. Lots of business have to find seasonal workers. Farmers are not special and they can learn to live with market forces just like the rest of us have to.
Niketas, the workers aren’t out there.
Unlike other sectors that may face a labor shortage where some production may be curtailed or expansion delayed, in the ag industry when harvest seasons comes there is a short window to gather the entire gross revenue of the company. If that window is missed, there is no revenue.
Before a farmer/orchardist can hire H2A migrant workers, they have to “earnestly recruit” local/US workers.
From the USDA website:
@Brian E:in the ag industry when harvest seasons comes there is a short window to gather the entire gross revenue of the company. If that window is missed, there is no revenue.
This is true for other sectors of the economy, this was true before the H2A program, this is true in other countries where they have no such thing, and this has been true for the entire ten thousand year history of agriculture.
Farmers are not special, every sector of the economy has its argument why it’s special, and everyone can learn to live with market forces.
Agriculture is special. We live without toasters. We can’t live without food.
While life would go on with all our apples came from New Zealand– I think a robust thriving ag sector, including fruit is important. Domestic production is important.
If we’re going to grow our economy to mitigate our debt crisis, every sector is important and a growing export capability to force reciprocal trade is part of that.
@ Brian E > “Before a farmer/orchardist can hire H2A migrant workers, they have to “earnestly recruit” local/US workers.”
How vigorously is it enforced?
We know that the H-1B “job postings” are very often frauds.
How much effort goes into actually positioning that recruiting effort for success?
(I don’t have a clue, but I can invent some plausible scenarios for circumventing it as being too much hassle. Did H-2A hires have to take DEI training before they can pick the tomatoes?) (So glad to have to put that question in the past tense!)
“Finding qualified seasonal workers is a problem. Harvesting jobs only last a few months. … As I pointed out from the USDA website on the costs of hiring a H2A migrant laborer, they are significant.”
If the jobs are costing the employers that much or paying the workers that well, then the “organizers” ought to be able to put together a data base of Americans who are willing to work seasonally and use the rest of the year to do other things.
It’s the same format as any other temp agency filling seasonal jobs: college students go to Disneyland in the summer; teachers moonlight a lot of places during the summer; maybe even cowboy poets would like a little extra money in the harvesting season.
It they can identify and “round up” people in a foreign country, then they can round up American citizens, without the long distances and communication difficulties.
IF NOT, then maybe there are a few things that the government regulations are skimping over, or not enforcing.
The big caveat here is that the welfare system is undercutting the economics of working in many different ways, which is another post altogether.
Please note that the illegals getting free room and board in sanctuary cities are not lining up for the bracero positions, even though they could probably go under the radar (which isn’t scanning all too diligently anyway) to sign up.
Aesop Fan, I don’t know how many farmers/orchardists are circumventing the rules to bring in H2A migrant workers– but if they’re going to go that route, it would just be simpler to hire illegals under the table.
I linked to a company that provides H2A workers for the ag industry, so if it were possible to do the same thing in the country profitably I would think some entrepreneur would do that.
I think the expectation for a good apple harvester is that they can pick around 6 tons of apples a day (12 bins). I’m not sure Americans could or would work that hard.
I think we need to think through as a country that we’re going to need immigrant labor for this new golden age Trump is attempting to bring. We tried moving jobs overseas, but that didn’t produce a sustainable economy. If we’re serious about a high labor participation economy we’re going to need to accept tariffs/subsidies. The benefit will be increased revenue to the government which could minimize the need to make substantial changes to our entitlement programs.
The bigotry of low expectations?
Agriculture is special. We live without toasters. We can’t live without food.
==
We can and do produce food without the use of imported coolies. We also import foodstuffs from abroad. Comparative advantage, and all that.
@ Brian E > “I don’t know how many farmers/orchardists are circumventing the rules to bring in H2A migrant workers”
Neither do I, but we know that people bend and break the regs for H-1Bs, and there are a myriad of other precedents which indicate that if there is a government program that can be corruptly gamed, it will be.
“I’m not sure Americans could or would work that hard.”
Why not honestly open up the hiring for them and find out?
Maybe you missed this earlier.
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/cesar-chavezs-rabid-opposition-to-illegal-immigration-not-covered-in-new-movie-6643666
A lot of those “lazy Americans” are naturalized legal immigrants, from the same countries as the imported workers. Do they suddenly quit working after taking the oath? Not the ones I know.
Check out the ranchers who work that hard, because you can’t hire foreigners to do what they do all year round, not just in the harvest season.
I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t allow non-citizens to do work that would otherwise go undone, but that the deck is loaded against citizens on several levels, and retreating to the mantra of “lazy Americans” is a cop-out that lets a lot of operational inefficiencies and deliberate manipulation go unaddressed.
I’m not sure Americans could or would work that hard.
==
There are millions of farmers in the United States, millions of people employed in the building trades, millions of people who grew up on farms. Millions of men who have been in the Marines. Stop being stupid.
Apple harvesting automation seems to be getting closer to being cost effective:
https://www.goodfruit.com/quest-for-automated-apple-harvest-continues/
Lots of automation in agriculture seems to be happening in California, due to changes in minimum wage and overtime laws.