Wrecking the agricultural part of California's economy is probably part of the plan...
> One, age 54, has worked in U.S. agricultural fields for 30 years and has a wife and children in the country. He said most of his colleagues have stopped showing up for work.
> "If they show up to work, they don't know if they will ever see their family again," he said.
> The other worker in the country illegally said, "Basically, we wake up in the morning scared. We worry about the sun, the heat, and now a much bigger problem — many not returning home. I try not to get into trouble on the street. Now, whoever gets arrested for any reason gets deported."
Heh, heck of a job Donnie, creating an opressive regime. Anyone remember the 1990's Claire Danes/Leonardo DiCaprio "Romeo and Juliet", which is the Shakespeare play but set in the modern era, with cars and guns? Maybe somewhere out there is a little Latina girl doing a reimagining of "Diary of Anne Frank", but the book will be called Diary of Ana Franco?
I support your right to your position, but also support doing nothing as rural america infrastructure is rapidly evaporated, first healthcare and then whatever else remains (because what will when the closest medical provider is hours away). It’s the only way people who think this matters (“do it the legal way” even though it’s borderline impossible and extremely expensive) will then understand food supply infrastructure is more important than residency status of the only people who will do these jobs, but maybe not.
Unless you’re a Native American, you’re an immigrant too.
Well, I enjoy having food available, so I do care about the effect of throwing a bomb into the agricultural workforce without any apparent planning or regard for the consequences.
First, the plurality of illegal immigrants in the US are people who entered the country legally but have overstayed their visas. There's not a lot of sneaking into a different person's country to do work.
Second, there is no "legal line" for immigration. The closest you get is that some visas where conversion to a permanent residency (green card) has an annual quota that is so heavily oversubscribed that there is a permanent backlog which stretches, in the most extreme cases, to over 20 years long.
Third, even when you're dealing with the legal immigration processes, that process is a bureaucratic hell that I don't wish on anybody. If you don't have anybody willing to descend into paperwork hell for you, then there is no way for you to immigrate to the US.
It would be one thing if it were some kind of sacrifice to have immigrants, but if all the undocumented immigrants disappeared, we would be substantially worse off as a country. We would have a shrinking, aging population.
The system of rules they are breaking is kept slow, arbitrary, and complex so that we can benefit from their labor without granting all the rights of being US citizens. This is so that they can be illegally exploited, but also because of the anxieties Americans have about the dilution of their culture (and to some, their bloodlines) by other ethnicities.
We didn't always have a system like this. It evolved into what it is, and now people feel morally righteous about upholding laws their own ancestors never were subject to.
And not a small number of people who did navigate the system but want everyone to have to pay the same dues. It's reminiscent to me of the folks with 4 year engineering degrees feeling salty that other folks have gotten into the industry through bootcamps, for a fraction of the time and money.
Okay, so let's make it a lot easier to immigrate legally. Except that's not what the Right is doing at the moment. They're simultaneously attacking legal, "the right way" immigration, and illegal immigration, because they don't care about "fair and legal" anything, they're just racist.
This is just ignorant to how Congress has dropped the ball when it comes to funding a functional immigration system which provides for a speedy process. It is almost as if there is an economic interest to keep labor cheap via undocumented workers which is not alleviated at all through these raids, but does increase costs while undermining the US economy.
There aren't all that many farmers. Americans love the idea of them, but they aren't actually a significant voting bloc. If they had been, we'd have had a more realistic position on migrant farm workers. Any complaints the farmers may have will be drowned out by the sound of how happy people are with the raids.
Those farmers are mostly in deep-red districts. Even if they're unhappy, they're not going to vote for the Democrat -- if there's even one on the ticket. The few who cross party lines won't suffice to to change the outcome in the district.
For the rest of the country... if it results in higher food prices, that might make a difference. Though perhaps less than you'd think. People's perceptions of inflation are only loosely correlated with the actual cost of things. Inflation of "only" 5% doesn't result in massive sticker shock, by itself. It's filtered through people's expectations. If people are generally happy, even substantial inflation will be passed off as merely trying times (for which we must double down on our bootstraps). If people are generally unhappy, it's easy to single out some specific item that has gone up in price and make it the be-all and end-all of consumer budgets.
The balance is close enough that at least one house will likely turn next November. But I've seen nothing to suggest it will be any kind of landslide. It's just enough to nudge a few 51-49 districts to 49-51 instead.
