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The Consequences Of Not Thinking Things Through

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on June 24, 2011.

06-24-2011 by Linda S. Carbonell

Migrant Farm Workers (photo from UFW)

There is a crisis building in American agriculture as a consequence of the anti-illegal immigrants laws being passed in Republican states, and it is going to impact everyone’s pocketbook very soon. There is a desperate shortage of people to pick our crops.

Migrant harvesters follow the maturation of crops across the country. It’s a very complex dance choreographed by Mother Nature, who has already been inserting too much flash mob into Swan Lake in the form of tornadoes, floods, heavy snows and shifted climate-change-driven growing seasons. Crops must be picked at the right moment. There is no margin for error. Picking crops is a carp shoot way to earn a living. One small disruption in the cycle can mean not earning anything for a few weeks. There is no unemployment insurance or welfare for migrant workers.

Most vegetables have stages of harvest. Take onions. In particular, take Georgia’s famous Vidalia onions. They are planted in tight rows, less than an inch between plants. The first harvest involves removing baby plants to make room for the stronger ones to mature. These baby plants can be sold as scallions. Then, because a mature Vidalia is notoriously huge, there is a second “culling” of half-grown onions. These are sold as “baby Vidalias” with thick green tops resembling scallions on steroids. Excellent in stir fries and for garnish, by the way, very dramatic-looking. Finally, the large, mature onions are harvested and fetch a higher price than ordinary yellow onions. No onion grower is going to house and feed harvesters for the weeks between these culling harvests, so the pickers go elsewhere and return.

In Georgia, they are not returning.

The recent implementation of Georgia’s version of Arizona’s “papers please” law has driven away both illegal and legal migrant farm workers. It is currently estimated that Georgia is short about 11,000 harvesters just as crops from onions to watermelons are ripening in the fields. It is a scenario being repeated in any state that has embraced the anti-immigrant hysteria started last year by Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer.

The owners of these impacted farms weren’t listened to when these laws were being pushed through their legislatures. Stephen Colbert was mocked for his testimony. The fact, the truth, is slowly dawning on people – Americans don’t want to spend 12 to 14 hours a day, bent over, sunburning their lower cheeks in the fields for minimum wage or less, living in conditions worse than slave quarters on antebellum plantations. Texas acknowledged the place of immigrants in their economy with an exception for domestic workers, but that isn’t helping farmers who need pickers, not nannies.

We have been dealing with higher food prices because of higher transportation costs. Now, we will be facing even greater increases in prices because of crop shortages. Our food will rot in the fields because of the anti-illegal immigrant propaganda of the rightwingnuts.

But, and this is purely speculation, a strange pattern is emerging. Most of these legislative measures against Planned Parenthood and illegal immigrants, as well as the push to prevent any tax increases and cut so-called entitlement spending are coming out of the far right wing of the party. It is perfectly normal for mainstream Republicans to denounce “tax increases” – up to the moment when they agree to plug a loophole or raise a rate because it’s the practical thing to do. Ronald Reagan was infamous for his attitude towards “welfare queens.” But the dug-in, walk-out-of-negotiations type of “no new taxes” positions we are seeing now, the insistence of privatizing any and all social programs over the objections of the majority of Americans, the dismantling of regulations that protect our environment, the destruction of education in states to pay for tax breaks for the rich, all of this is extreme even by Republican standards. It is already costing the Republican Party special elections. These measures are being driven by the Tea Party and the Libertarian/anti-government philosophy of wealthy donors like the Koch Brothers. They are being driven by media personalities like Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, not by the mainstream Party. Paul Ryan is now the third most disliked Republican in the country, after Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. His rating might be higher if more people had known who he is. His own district in Minnesota is seeing a chance that he could be unseated after seven terms. The Republican governors who are pushing these agendas have seen their favorability ratings drop into the sewers as calls for recall elections rise.

Therein lies the speculation…..are the established Republicans, the people who would vote for a Jon Huntsman, the long-serving Republicans like John Boehner, allowing the party to get so far out on the right fringe that they are probably going to cost the party big losses in 2012 in order to purge the party of the influence of the ideological dictators they are currently answering to? Is the moderate part of the party willing to sacrifice 2012 to regain control? It is worth watching how this dance in the Republicans plays out in the next year. How much damage to the country is the Republican Party willing to inflict to rid themselves of the Grover Norquists and Glenn Becks and Michele Bachmanns?

People vote with their pocketbooks more than anything else. Ideology is nice, but never trumps economics. As our grocery bills skyrocket because of “papers please” laws, opinions are going to shift about the righteousness of the right.