 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Farmers and other employers who rely heavily on the American tax-payer to foot the bill for billions of dollars in social services for illegal aliens immigrant labor said Friday that they could be driven out of business by the Bush administration's plans to enforce existing laws crack down on workers whose Social Security numbers do not match their names, and businesses that hire them.
"Everyone's very anxious," said Paul Schlegel, director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation. "We're heading into the busiest time of the year for agriculture, so you're going to see a lot of worry from Greedy bastards that have no remorse for flagrantly breaking the law farmers and employers about how you deal with this."
The industry group, which represents 75 percent of U.S. farmers, estimates at least half the nation's 1 million farm workers do not have valid Social Security numbers.
And now, time for another AP speculation stated as fact.
Losing them would devastate the industry, particularly fruit and vegetable growers, which rely heavily on illegal aliens manual labor, farmers said. Other parasitic businesses that count on the federal government to look the other way as they continue to openly break existing laws large numbers of illegal aliens workers include construction, janitorial and landscaping companies, and hotels and restaurants.
"We are concerned that the new regulations will result in crooked employers in numerous industries having to actually obey the laws and hire citizens at a living wage let workers go as the economy is facing an increasingly tight labor market," said John Gay of the National Restaurant Association.
"It'll just shut us down," said Manuel Cunha, a citrus grower who heads the Nisei Farmers League, a farming group in California's San Joaquin Valley. "It'll just be over if they start coming in here and busting gluttonous criminals employers. “The food chain would fall apart… This the stupidest thing our government could do," Cunha said. "They're worried about terrorists, but I've never heard of a farmworker walking across the Arizona desert with a nuke strapped across his back."
Bill Hammond, a member of the Texas Employers for Immigration Reform and the Texas Association of Business, predicted the enforcement would hurt his bank account state's agricultural, hotel and restaurant industries. Felonious Business operators with large numbers of illegal aliens immigrant employees are wondering how to bring their work force into compliance without interrupting production.
Suggestion: Pay a decent wage to attract currently unemployed US citizens and stop perpetuating a permanent underclass.
But unions representing millions of illegal aliens that pour millions of dollars into their coffers immigrant-heavy work forces reacted with anger, including the Service Employees International Union, with 1.9 million members in janitorial and security jobs, and nursing homes and home care. |