February 28, 2013
Which is
likelier to occur first:
a) A
near-total elimination of the welfare state.
b) The cultivation
and harvest of 2013’s crop of fruits and vegetables.
Okay, that wasn’t
difficult. But it’s an effective way to frame the challenge facing many American
farmers.
According to
the National Council of Agricultural
Employers, at least three-quarters of its industry’s seasonal workers are illegal
aliens. Why do growers turn to criminals to meet labor needs? The primary
culprit is the unwillingness of citizens to perform hot, repetitive, and
occasionally dangerous tasks. Planting, weeding, spraying, pruning, thinning,
picking, and packing can’t be done in air-conditioned offices that provide
massages and gourmet cuisine. So Americans aren’t interested.
Raise wages,
immigration restrictionists nag, and properly documented job-seekers will
gladly take over. It’s a “solution” based on the dodgy assumption that farms
have piles of cash lying around to substantially boost compensation. (Some
might. Most don’t.) Besides, municipalities, states, and the federal government
bestow dozens of goodies on low-skilled Americans. Housing subsidies, “free” healthcare,
energy assistance, food stamps, and “disability”
checks tend to dampen one’s tolerance for sweat, bugs, snakes, dirt, sunburns,
and muscle aches.
Farmers have a
legal method to obtain labor from abroad. The H2-A
program “allows U.S.
employers or U.S. agents who
meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States
to fill temporary agricultural jobs.” But the system is cumbersome and costly. In
conversations with farmers, recounted Fruit Growers News’s Matt
Milkovich, “I have yet to hear any of them describe the H-2A application process
as ‘easy.’ The complaints I hear mostly revolve around how much the program
costs, all the paperwork involved and the delays in getting needed workers.”
As the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh outlined in
a
January policy analysis, H2-A requires that employers provide more than the
right forms. They must furnish “transportation to their farms as well as to the
next workplace” and “federally inspected and adequate housing, meals, and/or
facilities for migrants to prepare their own meals.” The mandates are odd,
given that neither food nor shelter are decreed for high-tech
and temporary
nonagricultural guest workers. (In the U.S., the market supplies most housing
and food desires. Why must farmers become landlords and restaurateurs?)
Citizens unwilling
to do the job, and a regulatory nightmare to procure employees legitimately. No
wonder farmers go with illegals. For now, at least. Seal-the-border demagogues want
it to remain uncommon knowledge, but the immigration-industrial complex is immense.
According
to the Center for American Progress: “Through administration policy,
congressional appropriations, and passage of … legislation such as the Secure
Fence Act, the federal government has deployed massive enforcement resources at
the border and in the interior.” A study by
the Migration Policy
Institute concluded that “the U.S. government spends more on its
immigration enforcement agencies than on all its other principal criminal
federal law enforcement agencies combined. In FY 2012, spending ... reached
nearly $18 billion. This amount exceeds by approximately 24 percent total
spending for the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Secret Service,
U.S. Marshals Service, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
(ATF), which stood at $14.4 billion in FY 2012.” States
are getting tougher, too.
As a result of
the crackdowns, agriculture has suffered the loss of hundreds of millions -- perhaps
billions -- of dollars due to worker shortages. The University
of Georgia estimated that the cost of unharvested crops in its state in
2011 was $140 million. In September, a farmer in California’s
Pajaro Valley complained of “the worst labor
problem I’ve seen in 30 years.” According to the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration
Reform’s Craig J. Regelbrugge, asparagus growers in Washington “plowed under 15 percent of the
crop this year because of a shortage of pickers.”
Boneheaded
immigration policies don’t spell Armageddon for American agriculture, but they
do make purchases in the produce aisle more expensive. They depresses demand
for skilled positions, too -- many engineers, factory workers, mechanics,
chemists, and biologists owe their livelihoods to farming. Finally, when
agriculture suffers, so does trade. America’s fields, orchards, and
vineyards are star exporters. The value of fruit shipments grew by an inflation-adjusted
76 percent between 2001 and 2011. (Asia’s
appetite for apples, grapes, and cherries is voracious.)
It’s tough to
“steal” a job from someone who doesn’t want it. As
Washington lurches toward a sweeping immigration-reform package, fedpols ought
to understand the urgent need to combat labor shortages in agriculture. The only
alternative -- broad, permanent cuts to the welfare state -- is, at present,
politically untenable.
D. Dowd Muska (www.dowdmuska.com) writes about government, economics, and technology. Follow him on Twitter @dowdmuska.
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