Think immigrants are taking our jobs? Try picking strawberries for a day

[Kali]

https://newfoodeconomy.com/strawberry-empathy-study-labor/

Participants were also instructed to take pictures while picking. Initially, images were overwhelmingly of people and landscapes: very generic, about nothing in particular other than to chronicle who was there and what the general experience looked like. But as the day progressed, so did the feel of the photographs. By late afternoon, there were selfies of sweaty faces and wet, matted hair; one of a sweat ring in a baseball hat; a pair of soil-stained bare knees; and trays at various stages of fullness held by fingers caked with dirt and stained red.

By the day’s end everyone had taken photos documenting their physical exertion. For in the end it was precisely that “hard as hell” work that stuck with them long after we left the field for our respective middle-class homes. That work, as I learned during the exit interviews, even made some reevaluate what they thought about the people doing the work so we can eat “fresh” fruits and vegetables. Rebecca, the real estate agent, swore off “industrial strawberries,” vowing in the future to buy only local. Another claimed to have bought only Fair Trade strawberries since that day in the field. As for Jeff, the gentleman who had unapologetically called immigrant laborers “illegals,” he described how that day “softened” his stance on national immigration policy. “We need them to feed us,” he admitted sheepishly.

[underpants]

1. Guy I met freshman year at college

He lived out in the middle of Virginia. He'd heard you could make "some pretty good money" in the fields. Cabbage or cauliflower I can't remember which. This is a healthy football player type mind you. He gets there and the "Mexicans" or the foreman explain how to do it, what to look for. Trip up and back, fill your pocket and dump it in th truck, Mexicans get a shot of tequila non-Mexicans get that or beer.

He left at lunchtime. Exhausted and hammered.

[DURHAM D]

2. I picked 30 pumpkins yesterday.

Nearly killed me.

The regular workers sometimes work 12 hour days picking watermelons, cantaloupe and pumpkins. I don't know how they do it.

[ret5hd]

3. A few years back we had our roof done. Hottest part of summer, 100+

Crew of four.

Old roof stripped in one day.

New roof started on second day...one guy about 5'7", arms about as big as my thigh, carrying 2 bundles of shingles up the ladder at one time. I figure about 120 lbs per trip. Up and down...up and down...up and down. All day.

I'm 6', about 220 at the time, and this guy could have tore me apart in a second. Wouldn't have even started breathing hard.

Yeah, c'mon guys...fill out that job application and get you some of that. That's YOUR job!!! Don't let it be stole from ya!

[HipChick]

6. Had to get my roof replaced...it has 2 skylights in it too..

Crew of 5...all complete...new skylights installed...2 days and a half...they only stopped for one am of bad weather

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. In the 60's and early '70s,

I worked for relatives in theirbright leaf tobacco crops.
We would work from can't see to can't see."
We got a 15minute break in the morning and an hour's lunch.

That is some of the nastiest and hardest work you can do. The tobacco oozes sap so you end up covered in black tar. Then sand will get mixed in. The plants contained nicotine and gawd knows what chemicals. I read that it was equivalent to smoking packs of cigarettes as far as nicotine was concerned.

It was HOT. I wore shorts, no shoes and a tshirt. Anything more and you might just pass out. There were a lot of times that certain things had to be done to the plants. They would flower on top, and we had to go down every row and break those flowers off.

A lot of the work has been mechanized. However, immigrants are now doing what we once did if it has to be done manually.

[mountain grammy]

49. We had leaf tobacco fields in CT

I worked one summer, had friends who did more. I was a wimp. Hard, dirty work. Babysitting was easier.

The white kids worked the fields in the summer alongside the migrant workers. When the kids went back to school, just the migrant workers remained. Documented or not, I just don't know.

[Journeyman]

5. I picked strawberries once. Company I worked for also owned fields, let us glean the leftovers . . .

Corn wasn't too bad. Bush beans left our backs sore, stooping over all day. Tomatoes were terrible: the smell, the itching, the worms. But strawberries? Strawberries were murder.

Mind, I was under no timeline or quota. Just show up, pick what I wanted, go home. We were on our knees all morning. To make a proper go, to make a profit at it, you'd have to stoop. Screw that: crawling was a little less exhausting. But it was the little hairs, and the juice, which were the killers. The little hairs got all over your arms and neck, up in your ears and in your eyes. Itchy. Unbelievably itchy. And the juice. You were constantly kneeling on strawberries, or sitting on them, squishing them or dropping them on your body. Sticky. And they attracted flies and other critters too numerous to recall.

That was 40 years ago. I don't care what they pay strawberry pickers. They could make $15, $30, $40,000 an hour and it would be too little. That they do it for such a pittance is testament to their need and an indictment of the farmer's greed and our complicity.

[Mosby]

7. I had a friend who worked for a grower

In Casa Grande, all the workers had work permits. It's really hard work.

The Target near where I live has at least 2 dreamers working there for 10.50 per hour, are they taking jobs away from Americans? I don't know.

[gratuitous]

8. No, thanks

I did that in my younger years, picking strawberries in June and early July, pole beans in July and August. The other kids and I were picking for pocket money alongside migrant workers who were supporting their families. Young and limber, we did okay, but we weren't a patch on how hard and how long the migrants worked.

You couldn't find 10 guys big enough to get me out there again, and I don't much care for strawberries nearly 50 years later.

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[MichMary]

10. My son worked the strawberry fields summers when he was in high school

His job was to put the boxes together. He said he had never seen people's hands move so fast. He could barely keep up with supplying the boxes.

[BigmanPigman]

11. My family used to pick blueberries in the Poconos in PA

every summer and freeze them for our own use. Of course there is no comparison to those who do it all day every day. My sister tried to do it as a summer job, as well as selling encyclopedias door to door, and couldn't keep up with the pros. It IS very hard work.

[JI7]

12. The problem is people don't their kids and grandkids competing with them for better jobs

That's why they want to kick out dreamers.

[Ilsa]

69. One of the interesting stories is that there are

good jobs here that our own people don't want. My spouse works in finance technology. It's better now than five years ago, but the only way then to fill those jobs was to hire foreigners. The company paid $25k for each employee to get their work visas. Their salaries were the same as starting pay for anyone else they would hire. The difference: the Americans thought those jobs were too boring, not "sexy" enough. They wanted to do virtual stuff, special effects, gaming, etc.

[QED]

13. Here's a story from 2010 of someone trying to pick lettuce

The last word: A gringo in the lettuce fields


I WAKE UP staring into the bluest blue I've ever seen. I must have fallen into a deep sleep because I need several seconds to realize that I'm looking at the Arizona sky, that the pillow beneath my head is a large clump of dirt, and that a near-stranger named Manuel is standing over me, smiling. I pull myself to a sitting position. To my left, in the distance, a Border Patrol helicopter is hovering. To my right is Mexico, separated by only a few fields of lettuce. "Buenos días," Manuel says.

I stand up gingerly. It's only my third day in the fields, but already my 30-year-old body is failing me. I feel like someone has dropped a log on my back. And then piled that log onto a truck with many other logs, and driven that truck over my thighs. "Let's go," I say, trying to sound energetic as I fall in line behind Manuel, stumbling across rows of lettuce and thinking about "the five-day rule." The five-day rule, according to Manuel, is simple: Survive the first five days and you'll be fine. He's been a farmworker for almost two decades, so he should know. I'm on day three of five — the goal is within sight. Of course, another way to look at my situation is that I'm on day three of what I promised myself would be a two-month immersion in the work life of the people who do a job that most Americans won't do. But thinking about the next seven weeks doesn't benefit anyone. Day three of five.

<snip>

THAT FIRST WEEK on the job was one thing. By midway into week two, it isn't clear to me what more I can do to keep up with the rest of the crew. I know the techniques by this time and am moving as fast as my body will permit. Yet I need to somehow double my current output to hold my own. I'm able to cut only one row at a time while Manuel is cutting two. Our fastest cutter, Julio, meanwhile can handle three. But how someone could cut two rows for an hour — much less an entire day — is beyond me. "Oh, you will get it," Pedro tells me one day. "You will most definitely get it." Maybe he's trying to be hopeful or inspiring, but it comes across as a threat.

http://theweek.com/articles/497095/last-word-gringo-lettuce-fields

[Control-Z]

53. I can thank you enough

for posting this. It is good first hand story telling. And a story worth telling. They cut it shorter than I would have preferred.

[QED]

56. I'm surprised I could find it...

I didn't remember too many details from the article but guess it was enough. Glad you found it useful.

[Scurrilous]

14. K&R

[TomCADem]

15. Bernie Sanders Has Argued That Immigrants Do Take Away Our Jobs

Here is Bernie explaining to Lou Dobbs why he was opposed to work authorization programs:

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/12/10981234/bernie-sanders-lou-dobbs

SANDERS: Of course there is hope that we can change that. And I think there are a growing number of Americans who understand that there's something wrong when the middle class in this country continues to shrink despite a huge increase in worker productivity, poverty continues to increase. Since Bush has been president, 5 million more Americans have slipped into poverty. Six million Americans more have lost their health insurance and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider.

So when President Bush tells you how great the economy is doing, what he is really saying is that the CEOs of large multinationals are doing very, very well. He's kind of ignoring the economic reality of everybody else and that gets us to the immigration issue.

If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I don't know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are now.

* * *

DOBBS: Those are all industries in which wages are declining. I don't hear that discussed on the Senate floor by the proponents of this amnesty legislation.

SANDERS: That's right. They have no good response. I read something today that a lot of people coming into this country are coming in as lifeguards. I guess we can't find - that's right. We can't American workers to work as lifeguards. And the H1B program has teachers, elementary school teachers. Well, you know.

DOBBS: And that H1B program, we got to watch Senator Ted Kennedy watch there with the sole witness being one Bill Gates, the world's richest man, telling him he wanted unlimited H1B visas, obviously uninformed to the fact that seven out of 10 visas under the H1B program goes to Indian corporations that are outsourcing those positions to American corporations in this country and that four out of five of those jobs that are supposed to be high-skilled jobs are actually category one jobs which is low skill.

SANDERS: Well, you raise a good point, in that this whole immigration guest worker program is the other side of the trade issue. On one hand you have large multinationals trying to shut down plants in the America, move to China and on the other hand you have the service industry bringing in low wage workers from abroad. The result is the same — middle class gets shrunken and wages go down.

[surrealAmerican]

23. The excerpt you posted is clearly about tech workers ...

... not farm workers.

Nobody thinks farm workers are earning a middle-class wage.

[TomCADem]

24. "Life Guards" and "Service Industry" Are Tech Workers?

Bernie was giving a couple of examples and did not mention tech workers. Also, when he was referring to immigrants working the "service industry," I don't think most folks think of computer programmers as being in the service industry.

[surrealAmerican]

28. They're not farm workers either.

Are you trying to argue that Americans won't take jobs as life guards or in the service industry?

I would argue that Americans would take jobs - even as farm workers - but they would insist on better pay, better working conditions, and benefits. This would increase the price of foods like strawberries perhaps to the point that consumers would buy imported produce instead.

There is no easy answer here. We have an industry that exists because it abuses its employees.

[TomCADem]

55. So, you and Bernie Are Making The Same Argument As Jeff Sessions?

Sessions alleged that DACA has “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens."

Frankly, I think both Bernie Sanders and Jeff Sessions are wrong in scapegoating immigrants for the economic struggles of the working class and the middle class. Immigrants have always been scapegoated throughout our nation's history. The U.S. is a country of immigrants. The people who have immigrated have often been desperate, but who were looking for opportunity. Indeed, I think the fact that our nation is built from people who are willing to leave family and friends to build a new life in a foreign land is part of the reason why our Nation is great.

[surrealAmerican]

62. This has nothing to do with DACA.

It also has nothing to do with illegal immigration.
If you read anything Sanders has said about DACA, you would know he does not agree with Jeff Sessions on this, nor do I.

It's about H1b visas, and "guest worker" programs - a very different issue.


I think we agree that the US needs to accept immigrants, and have a path by which they can gain citizenship. This needs to include people who entered the country illegally, as well as refugees and other legal immigrants.

Where we disagree is this: I don't think we should be encouraging companies to import temporary low-wage workers from other countries when qualified people who already live here could do those jobs - even if the American workers would need to be paid more.

[TomCADem]

73. So, Now You Are Against Low-Wage Workers?

This is another attempt to scapegoat immigrants. Most of the growth in immigration has been among higher wage workers. Of course, initially, you said that Bernie was against immigration by "tech workers," but now seem to be pivoting to bash lower wage workers who are immigrating to the U.S. in much lower rates now.

[theaocp]

16. K&R

Shared on FB, too. Thanks.

[TexasBushwhacker]

17. Not only is it back breaking, it's seasonal! n/t

[FLPanhandle]

18. All immigrants aren't picking fruit though

I've seen it here in Florida where immigrants have had a huge impact on construction jobs. Roofing, painting, construction labor. Many now work under the table for cash, undercut what was well paid US citizen jobs, don't pay income tax on the cash work. Many US workers to compete have had to slash their rates.

If we are debating immigration, be honest. It has had an impact on jobs and rates of pay.

To claim otherwise is disingenuous.

[SergeStorms]

29. Maybe their....

Republican bosses shouldn't hire them? It's not too difficult to know where the blame lies for this. The meat packing industry, corporate farmers, construction companies, landscape companies.....I'd say 75% or more owned by Republicans. They want slave laborers so their profits are bigger, so they can afford the new boat, motor home, and all the gas guzzling "toys" Republican men are known to cherish.

Just my opinion, for what it's worth.

[FLPanhandle]

40. I agree, go after the employers

The people driving down wages and putting US citizen out of work are the ones who choose to use cheaper "under the table" immigrant labor.

Instead of building walls, go after the employers.

[JI7]

30. Paid under the table and avoiding taxes is done by many

[Not Ruth]

32. Construction work is extremely skilled labor and backbreaking, regardless of legality

Most people could not do it regardless of what papers they have. Someone with skills can easily make $200/day cash if they are a worker for someone else. 2x that if they can get the clients for themselves. I cannot imagine what rates would be without illegal labor.

[lunamagica]

33. The solution is to make them legar residents, and then citizens. Then they'd get paid

Last edited Sat Sep 9, 2017, 09:21 PM - Edit history (1)

like any American

[FLPanhandle]

36. Or start by paying US citizens a proper wage

And punish employers that try to undercut workers wages by using immigrants to drive down rates and taxes?

[lunamagica]

45. Legalization is the best course. If they are legally working there won't be down rates

and taxes

[TNNurse]

19. We had a concrete driveway poured and some flooring in a basement.

Local guy owned the company, almost all of the workers were Hispanic. They worked well and efficiently. Cleaned up after themselves, no litter left. The owner said, they show up on time and sober, work hard and are the most reliable he has. Also he was quite clear we would hear no bad language or have any problem with their behavior.

It was impressive.

[FLPanhandle]

21. So without the immigrants the owner would have hired local guys

Sort of proves the point, that immigration does take away US citizen jobs.

Was the owner paying them in cash under the table, so no taxes were collected?

[TNNurse]

31. Perhaps I should have added detail.

He said local guys showed up late or drunk or not at all. Did not work well together and whined and cussed and required more supervision.

In other words these were reliable hardworking employees. The local guys were not. How do you run a business with unreliable employees???

[FLPanhandle]

35. So US citizens are drunk whiners?

Maybe he can't get good workers since he is paying wages only immigrants would take.

I call bullshit. US citizens will work hard for a good days wages. They always have.

If he can only get drunks, then he is paying immigrant wages.

[NickB79]

52. My factory pays $25/hr to start. We get a TON of drunk whiners

Turnover rates have gotten worse in the past decade, despite rising pay and union benefits. When I started there were lots of guys with 20, 30 yr seniority, lifers putting kids through college, building retirement funds. Now, we struggle to find guys willing to stick it out more than a year. 2/3 don't make it through the 3-month train in period. My 13 years seniority now puts me near the top of the list as the lifers have retired, and my coworkers get fired or quit. I've seen guys fired for working drunk, or on meth, or threatening to shoot a coworker, or molesting a female coworker in the women's locker room. Work ethics seems to be a lost art. Management has gotten worse as higher efficiency has been pushed, but not enough to turn down $60K a year and a Cadillac health insurance plan, IMO.

Frankly, some of my best coworkers are immigrants. I know Mexican and Bosnian guys putting in 6 months straight without a day off, clearing 100K a year thanks to overtime and double time.

[Not Ruth]

38. You get what you pay for

I once hired the guys that resurface roads M-F, to do my driveway on a Saturday. For a half days work, they were paid almost $1k each. Very reliable.

[Not Ruth]

34. Without immigrants, you would hire local, probably union guys with FT work, picking up side $

Those guys do not work cheap by any means.

[SergeStorms]

39. See post #29.

The same thing applies. If these people wouldn't hire them, they wouldn't be coming across the border for these jobs. These jobs would then be available to Americans IF they could handle the hard work and low pay. A vast majority won't, so there you go!

I'm not trying to be argumentative about this, I'm just pointing out some of the reasons these people have, and cherish, these jobs. Most Americans are too lazy, I'm sorry to say. They think they're owed something better in life. It's that inherent white privilege so pervasive in our country. And it's real, not just a dismissive platitude. Like I said, that's just my opinion, but I've been on this planet long enough to make some reasonable observations about life's vagaries.

[FLPanhandle]

42. "most Americans are too lazy"

I'll say this as politely as possible, bullshit.

Many US citizens are working 2-3 minimum wage jobs, doing whatever they can to help pay for their families. The idea that Americans won't work hard so they are poor/unemployed is a Right Wing talking point.

Americans will work their asses off for a decent wage. Many people would happily trade in multiple minimum wage paying jobs for one good paying construction job. Americans have done so in the past, but won't do a job like that for minimum wage or worse.

Illegal Immigration does lower the wage scale so only immigrants will do it. That doesn't make the American poor/unemployed lazy.

[Kali]

46. bullshit

most of this thread is people telling of their experience doing farm work, nobody wants to do it - not the people working 2 or 3 jobs, not anybody. even if the wages and times were WAY better, there would be very few people willing to do the back-breaking, seasonal work of these people.

Yes in SOME construction and service work citizens would take the jobs, but not all of it by any means. and the consumer gets pretty uptight forking over fair wages so instead of infighting with the other workers legal or not, both the consumers and the owners of the companies need to be held accountable.

Whining about Mexicans taking "our" jobs is scapegoating the lowest in the hierarchy when those at the top are the real cause of the problems.

[SergeStorms]

54. But would they....

do one back breaking, low paying job all day long?

I've lived in Florida, and I've seen it with my own two eyes. I think you're basically talking about construction jobs. I'm talking about a vast cross-section of laboring, in the fields, orchards, construction etc. I'm sorry as well, but Americans will not break their backs in the hot sun for below minimum wage jobs.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. No hard feelings, OK?

[panader0]

20. In the early 70's when I lived in Eugene, Oregon,

I picked cherries for a guy named Avon Babb in his orchard right next to the
Willamette River. Me and my two buddies ate our breakfast and lunch in the
trees. We got a buck fifty (I think) per flat. Maraschino, had to have the stems
attached. All of the other pickers were Mexicans, the men, boys and girls in the
trees, and the older women and babies on blankets in the shade below.

They were so hospitable to us, feeding us, and one night inviting us to their
cabins for venison tacos and music (and beer). I have been a bricklayer for
forty years. Most of my co-workers have been Mexican. They gave me my
name 'panadero'. I have huge respect for my Mexican friends, they are not
afraid of work.

[Wolf Frankula]

22. I quote the late Sam Howard

a friend who said, "Mexicans are hard working, family oriented, churchgoing people, and we need more of them."

Wolf

[mjvpi]

25. Discussions about legal/ illeagle foriegn workers are upside down.

People coming here for a better life is totally understandable. The people who hire these people are the true villains, especially undocumented workers. That whole process drives wages down. Contractors who hire crews and pay them under the table drive wages down and compete unfairly with contractors who play by the rules. Starting with Reagan we stopped enforcing penalties against employers, for the most part. Started blaming people simply looking for a better life.

I picked cucumbers for one summer in Middle school 45 years ago. I have never let anyone speak in any sort of derogatory manor about people coming to work in our country. One summer is all I lasted. Hardest work that I ever have done in my life.

[CCExile]

26. I picked watermelons one summer out of Stockdale, Texas in 1968 or then abouts, for $1.00/hr.

I lasted about 3 weeks. It was harder, and paid 7 times less, than being a roughneck in Galveston Bay for the summer of 1975. I can't imagine doing field work for a (probably short!) lifetime at any pay. Roughnecking at least paid for another year at UT! Watermelon picking wouldn't have paid for my books. Field workers feed us, and I guarantee you 99.9 percent of "real" Americans wouldn't do it for less than $20/hr, and you would see a dramatic popular resurgence of unionism, as there was no retirement, insurance, and you have to bring your own lunch!

[SergeStorms]

27. As a teenager....

I used to pick apples, harvest cabbage, cut cabbage, cut and bale hay etc. You had to get a "work permit" at age 13 (in N.Y. State anyway) in order to get a farm job. I grew up in a rural area where jobs were scarce if you didn't want to work on a farm. For a kid, this was the only work around. This was in the early to mid-60s. Backbreaking work, even for a young, strong kid. I had muscles on top of my muscles back then. When I graduated from high-school I was out of there! No way was I going to do that type of work any longer than I had to. Could I do that work when I was older? Maybe, but I would have been wracked with pain and my longevity on the job would have been very short.

I really don't know how the Central American laborers do what they do, and for so long. They get paid shit-wages by corporate farms (generally owned by Republicans, who hire them without batting an eye, then complain about "immigrants" ) and usually send most of their money back to relatives in their country of origin. Yet they love this country, and contrary to what the racists say, they avoid trouble like the plague. I grew up with these people. Their children would start school with us in the fall, but as soon as the crops were finished, they moved south where there was work in the winter months. Yet the still valued their kids education. I felt so sorry for the kids, because they never got a chance to make lasting relationships anywhere. They were "itinerant laborers", and as such didn't qualify for any of the school "perks" we white kids always took for granted. I'm almost 70 now, but I still remember their names and faces.

My god, I'm starting to cry. That happens when you reach a certain age, and think of things you haven't thought of in quite some time. You also have the advantage of looking back with different eyes, and a different heart. Ahhh shit, that's it for awhile.

[customerserviceguy]

48. Why do they do it? The answer is simple

The places they come from are utter hellholes. They'd get paid even less and be treated even shittier by the farmers and ranchers in their own countries. If we can effectuate change in those societies, they wouldn't be risking so much to come here.

But, everybody's content with the way it is. The farmers get a docile labor force that they can underpay, shoppers get cheap produce, and the corrupt governments back home get money sent to family members still in the old country to keep their economies going. I call it "soft slavery".

[JI7]

59. except their kids often do well and go on to college and get good paying jobs

and then people want to kick them out because THAT is what actually many racists have a problem with.

with immigrant families improving by each generation.

just like you may hear all the complaints about black people on welfare but it's when there are people like Obama and others who succeed that they most get angry.

[yardwork]

50. You cry because you're a good, decent person with empathy.

[alterfurz]

37. hardest job I've ever had...

...was picking strawberries in my H.S. sophomore summer of '63, for 8¢ per quart. Made $10 on a good day, while being regularly out-picked by far younger migrant kids. My mosquito bites got mosquito bites, and the red stains on my hands & knees did not completely fade away until well after school started again. Didn't have a name for it back then, but that summer was when it began to dawn on me just what white middle-class privilege meant.

[a kennedy]

41. Yah, like apple picking here in Minnesota, the Apple capital of the USA.

It's very hard work. WHITES LAST A DAY IF THAT. Lotsa Spanish speaking people are here for the apple picking season. Groups do it to experience it.....hate it, and don't come back.

[Kaleva]

43. Did it for a $1.50 an hour back in the 70s

Picking berries was easy work but I found it very boring and much prefered doing tasks that pushed me to my physical limits

[former9thward]

44. When I was in high school in Oregon we would pick strawberries all summer.

That was most students' summer job. We made money and that is how the crop got picked.

[Not Ruth]

51. My Oregon relatives all did that in high school

It motivated them to go to grad school when they figured out that being a smart kid and getting a fellowship paid more than working in the fields.

[customerserviceguy]

47. When I was a teenager, back in the 1970's

in the Pacific Northwest, kids used to pick berries in the summer. I never did, as I had two paper routes (year round) but a good number of my classmates did. We weren't from the poor side of town, but those who worked in the fields for a few weeks during harvest season learned about the value of work.

Today, little Tod and Muffy are spared from having to work by doting parents who pay for their adolescence way after 20 years of age. Maybe the kids from the neighborhood where I lived would have wanted too much to get out and pick berries, or maybe the farmers of the 1970's wouldn't think of hiring labor that wasn't 100% legal, but clearly, things have changed.

125 years ago, you needed horses to farm, today, if any farm families have a horse or two, chances are, they're just expensive pets. If we had no undocumented farm workers, then wages for picking produce would go up to the point where it would be feasible to make a machine to do it. Anybody here think that commercial crops will be harvested by stoop labor 125 years from now? The soft slavery of a docile underpaid workforce is the only thing in the way of that future.

[DonCoquixote]

60. an ugly fact that will never be discussed

is that the southern plantations are the same model as was used in antebellum days, only with Mexicans instead of Africans. However, since a lot of these Mexicans are doing things like, oh, making businesses, sending kids to college. and all the other stuff they thought only whites should do (and not even a lot of whites) now you hear about reviving prison labor, leasing them out to farms.

The fact is, whenever you hear someone say "it ain't about slavery", look how they treat the Mexicans. If not for the war being lost, they would be selling slaves at wal-mart.

[pansypoo53219]

61. i only picked strawberries w/ my grandpa for jam or on vacation and they were there.

doing it all day at speed, not easy. keeping them unsquished. amerika has no idea these mexican serfs are benefiting their pocketbook.

[DFW]

63. The "send 'em home" crowd needs to hear an ultimatum

"They stay, or your food bill goes up by 150%. Groceries that cost you $100 last weekend will cost you $250. Not once, but forever."

Then ask, "do you STILL want them to leave?"

(The scary part is that half of them will still say "yes," and most of them can't afford the extra money they would need in order to eat--welcome to the world of the foxsucker).

[Honeycombe8]

64. Silly. Who do you think picked strawberries before immigrants did?

Physical labor is always hardest at the first, when you're not used to it. As with anything, the more you do it, the more used to it you become, and the more efficient at it.

Americans have a centuries-long tradition of hard work, including picking cotton, picking strawberries, working in dangerous factories from dawn to dark, farming, ditch-digging, laying railroad lines, working on skyscrapers, cleaning skyscraper windows, etc.

[Kali]

70. um

it was almost always new, bottom of the class structure IMMIGRANTS. or straight up SLAVES.

[L. Coyote]

72. Kids often did. Strawberry season starts as school lets out. Kids still work as berry pickers.

I grow and pick my own. Fifty 12 oz. tubs in the freezer this year, solid blocks of berries in strawberry juice. Lots of everbearing raspberries to pick today, sweet corn to put in the freezer, and three boxes of downfall apples to juice. Plus, the yard to mow. Just staying fit in old age.

[Horse with no Name]

67. Like many kids growing up in Arizona years ago

I spent the summers being an underpaid farm worker. Getting up at 3 am to chop cotton for a full day that could end at noon because of the heat.
I planted a field one bulb at a time once.
I grew up knowing who Caesar Chavez was and why he protested.
I am pretty certain those experiences are why I hold the views on immigration that I do.
Working in the fields alongside these people is humbling and we would be a better country if more did it.

[Lucinda]

68. KNR Thank you!

[L. Coyote]

71. Try growing a garden for a summer and starving if you fail.

Almost everyone today would end up dead in that experiment.