I see Citizens working in the summer heat all the time. I do live in farm country after all. And Citizens don't need to line up at Home Depot for the simple fact that we have other avenues open to us that will help us get jobs. Sorry but the "citizens won't do X job" won't work on me. I know better from personal experiance. I have lived from Northern Idaho to South and North Carolina to Washington state and Oregon and several states in between. I myself have worked those fields and know what its like. From picking strawberries to large tree nursury work. And in each of those farms guess what I saw? Other citizens working the same job every single season.
Now don't get me wrong, I know quite well that illegals do those jobs to. Just saying that the whole "illegals will do the jobs citizens won't do" is big time BS.
WRAY, Ga., - One of the toughest laws yet to fight illegal immigration went into effect today in Georgia. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the most controversial provision - requiring police to check the immigration status of suspects who don't have proper identification.
But it is now a felony to use false documentation to apply for a job. CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann says Georgia farmers have been anticipating this day, and the law is already having a big effect.
In south Georgia, it's a banner year for blackberries - but a bad year for berry farmer Gary Paulk.
"There's a lot of what appear to be good berries," Paulk said. "If we had the workers."
On one corner of this family farm, twenty acres of blackberries rot away.
"This is a healthy field. And it should have been picked," Paulk said. "But there's nobody here."
Despite economy, Americans don't want farm work
Too many Mexican and Guatemalan pickers this year stayed away. They're scared away by Georgia's new crackdown on illegal immigration......
Illegal immigration crackdown impacts harvests - CBS News
ONEONTA, Ala. – Facing the possibility of labor shortages due to Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigration, some of the state's farmers are planting less.
Keith Dickie said he and other growers in the heart of Alabama's tomato country didn't have any choice but to reduce acreage amid fears there won't be enough workers to pick the delicate fruit.
Some farmers lacked enough hands to harvest crops because immigrants fled the state after Gov. Robert Bentley signed the immigration law last fall, and some told The Associated Press they fear the same thing could happen this year.
Read more:
Alabama Immigration Crackdown Prompts Farmers to Scale Back Production | Fox News Latino
Bitter Harvest: U.S. Farmers Blame Billion-Dollar Losses on Immigration Laws
By Alfonso SerranoSept. 21, 20120
Ralph and Cheryl Broetje rely on roughly 1,000 seasonal workers every year to grow and pack more than 6 million boxes of apples on their farm along the Snake River in eastern Washington. It’s a custom they’ve maintained for over two decades. Recently, though, their efforts to recruit skilled labor, mostly undocumented immigrants, have come up woefully short despite intensive recruitment efforts in an area with high rates of unemployment.
The Broetjes and an increasing number of farmers across the country say that a complex web of local and state anti-immigration laws account for acute labor shortages. With the harvest season in full bloom, stringent immigration laws have forced waves of undocumented immigrants to flee certain states for more-hospitable areas. In their wake, thousands of acres of crops have been left to rot in the fields, as farmers have struggled to compensate for labor shortages with domestic help.
U.S. Farmers Urge Changes to Immigration Law Amid Labor Shortage | TIME.com
