FYI, berry picking machines already exist. I don’t know how the cost compares to human pickers.
Sure, they come here for jobs, and sometimes send the money home, sure. But got a cite they come here for food stamps or similar benefits?
Sure there are, but there are also many that cant, and have to be picked by hand:
*Other fruits and vegetables that have to be picked by hand, whether because they have to be handled carefully or because they ripen at different times, include:
-Blackberries
-Raspberries
-Strawberries (most varieties)
-Black Raspberries
-Huckleberries
-Boysenberries
-Grapes (intended for eating or raisins and not for wine)
-Cashew apple
-Figs
-Gooseberries
-Apples
-Pears
-Apricots (there are attempts to harvest apricots and peaches mechanically, though it’s debatable whether its more cost efficient or not, yet, due to the amount of damage that occurs to the produce and plants)
-Peaches
-Mangos
-Avocados
-Litchi
-Kiwi
-Ripe olives
-Sweet Cherries
And Blueberries… if you don’t want to pull off all the unripe ones at the same time.
*
for historical reference -
You said they would be hard to automate but you realize that they do exist. So it is possible.
When machines do work cheaper, quicker, faster, safer, more reliable, etc., they replace human and animal labor. History bears this out.
We could probably make it easier for people to find crop picking jobs. I know in California a lot of work for Latino immigrants is word of mouth, which farms need work today, etc. If you aren’t tapped into the immigrant community how do you find out?
Then wages will go up and up until they’re high enough to make up for the extra expense of living in that area, and then applicants will start showing up.
Is there some reason whole families can’t move out of the poor neighborhoods of American cities the same way whole families/groups moved out of European cities a century ago?
During my period of unemployment, being on state benefits I looked at this type of job and the recruiters made it purposely hard for locals: they required an Eastern European language (I forget which one). That’s just a pretext, though: they were gangmasters who wanted people they could control. As a Briton, I obviously spoke English and had knowledge of employment rights etc.
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Similar benefits? Such as U.S. laws that force illegal alien students to attend U.S. public schools at no cost? Do illegal aliens fully fund programs for students with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), English Language Learners (ELL), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English as a Second Language (ESL), or any of the other taxpayer funded programs? Do these programs, as well as increased class sizes, create a drain on public school budgets at the same time they benefit the illegal aliens? Does this type of benefit make illegal entry into the U.S.A. worth the effort? I think it does.
Robots.
That requires that the new environment be better for all or most of the family, which goes back to the point I raised earlier. If you’ve got several adults in the family, are they ALL going to be able to get better jobs picking strawberries, or is somebody going to have to leave a good job so somebody else can find work? If Mama has to quit her job with the school district (that comes with health insurance and a pension) so Pops can find work in the field, the net situation probably didn’t improve, even if Mama goes out and picks berries too. If elderly family don’t have access to the health care resources they need, what does that do the family situation?
Next, remember that most agricultural jobs are seasonal: strawberry picking season in California, for example, peaks from April to June. The rest of the year, they don’t need as many workers in the strawberry fields; there are jobs picking broccoli or peppers or asparagus, but those jobs might not be in the same town or county or even state. Agricultural workers tend to be migrant workers for precisely this reason–they follow the crops around. That’s not so easy to do when you also need to bring along family members who have other sorts of jobs, or have health issues, or would benefit from attending the same school for more than two months at a time.
During the Great Immigration, whole families could move because the situation in America offered more opportunities for everybody – famine in Ireland and pogrom in Russia didn’t discriminate, and when every male in the family earned his living by farming, they could all find new jobs together, whether farming in Kansas or in a Connecticut factory. (And health care needs tended to be much simpler, because people who needed advanced care didn’t survive long.) That’s not the situation with people on food stamps today.
If they weren’t in the U.S., would the kids even need/want to enroll in bilingual education? Is there some driving force compelling parents to sneak across the border to enroll their kids in classes to speak a language other than what the parents speak, and is that compulsion strong enough to drive much illegal immigration? I’ve not seen evidence of such.
(And huge numbers of LEP/ELL/ESOL/ESL programs serve kids who are quite legally in the U.S., as lawful immigrants, refugees, children of H1-B and other visa-holders, etc., so why should illegal aliens be expected to “fully fund” such programs anyway?)
Don’t know about anyone else, but it was fear of death, not lack of a job, that drove my father’s family out of Eastern Europe. As those who remained in Europe were eventually all slaughtered the fear was based in a real threat.
Most poor folks in US cities aren’t going to be killed if they fail to move. Thus, they lack a certain level of motivation found in my ancestors. And, incidentally, in many of today’s refugees fleeing hazardous parts of the world.
Do we want to make a situation where poor people in US cities have that level of motivation? I certainly don’t.
Wages won’t go up. Well, they will, temporarily, but, ultimately, the companies will either move to doing those jobs outside the US or other companies will come in and undersell them since they can afford to do so cheaper.
These immigrants doing jobs no one else wants are why food is as cheap as it is. They’re happy to have work to allow them to live here. We’re happy with cheaper food. The companies are happier with making profits off of cheaper food. It’s good all around.
This is why I find it so stupid that people want to get rid of them.
Oh, yeah? Well who’s going to kill all of them off if we keep the terrorists out?
This ^^
No, it isn’t. Undocumented immigrants pay taxes, but don’t receive assistance.
And this is about ethnic cleansing and persecution, not “illegal aliens”. It has nothing to do with immigration. Nobody cares if the targeted people are immigrants or not; just that they have the wrong skin color.
For a change, the USA is not being a rogue empire about this. If an American entered any other country in the world in violation of immigration law, he would be escorted to the border more quickly than any illegals are being expelled from the USA.
Every sovereign state has right to promulgate an immigration policy unique to itself, and enforce it in the state’s best interests. Millions of Americans are scurrying around the world trying to find a country that will not kick them out.
My nephew took a job teaching English in China. The company he worked for was shady. Turns out they had provided him with a tourist, not a work visa.
One day men showed up, screaming orders in Chinese (which my nephew did not understand) and pointing guns at him. They took him to the airport, screaming the entire time.
We should be better than this.
You realize that is a quote from a random self-described “foodie” on the Internet and not an industry expert or even someone who claims to have direct knowledge of the industry?
Here’s a cite:
And a quote:
Are you fine with putting all the small farmers who can’t afford machinery out of business?