Monday, March 05, 2007
Editorial: When immigrants flee, crops rot
Immigrants heard Colorado's you're-not-welcome-here message loud and clear. Now the state needs its criminals to fill the workers' former farm jobs.
From the RoundTable blog
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Colorado is a success story of sorts for the camp that believes illegal immigrants are nothing more than criminals who ought to be barred at the border.
The state's tough laws -- which encourage local police to check papers and make sure no one without a fistful of proper documentation receives one penny's worth of social services or a driver's license -- actually worked. Immigrants, both illegal and documented (who don't want the hassle), have stayed away.
In fact, so few migrant workers showed up for last year's harvest that crops were left to rot in the field.
In order to avoid a repeat of that in the future, Colorado has hit on another idea: Use convicted criminals to pick crops.
Farmers can pay convicts piddling wages; the crops will get picked under armed guard; Colorado's farming industry will remain viable; the dregs of society will earn their three hots and a cot; and everyone will be happy.
Well, not quite everyone. Landscapers and the owners of restaurants, car washes and other service-oriented businesses can't fill their low-wage jobs either. But it isn't as if Colorado's ready for prisoners to bus tables or trim residential trees.
So why would Colorado reward farmers with 60-cent-an-hour labor when the farmers who formerly relied on illegal immigrants were breaking the law? After all, the argument goes, businesses should be held accountable for their role in the growing illegal immigrant problem.
Because the sad truth that few in the anti-immigration crowd wish to admit is that cheap labor artificially suppresses food prices.
Unless Americans are willing to further subsidize through tax dollars the cost of bringing crops to market or to pay higher prices in the grocery stores, we need some type of lawbreaker -- whether an illegal immigrant or an American criminal -- to do the backbreaking work for next to nothing in wages.
This is important to keep in mind as President Bush and Congress renew discussions about an overhaul of immigration laws. Bush and enlightened members of Congress understand that a guest worker component is an economic necessity.
Unfortunately, less enlightened members like Rep. Virgil Goode stand ready to whip up the xenophobic constituency. Last week as the discussion began, Goode championed a new political documentary (directed by former ballet dancer and rodeo bull rider Chris Burgard) that lauds the work of The Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.
The vigilantes aim to drive every illegal immigrant from our country. Then what?
