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ICE raids on farms risk food supply chain disruption
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Farmworkers illegally in the US are in hiding
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Crops are unharvested and rotting
I’m sure the private prisons will offer their services.
https://www.hcn.org/articles/agriculture-farmers-turn-to-prisons-labor-to-fill-labor-needs/
Prison inmates are picking fruits and vegetables at a rate not seen since Jim Crow.
Convict leasing for agriculture – a system that allows states to sell prison labor to private farms – became infamous in the late 1800s for the brutal conditions it imposed on captive, mostly black workers.
Today, 24 Texas prison units still have agribusiness operations. Nine are located on former plantations. Incarcerated workers harvest many of the same crops that slaves and later convict laborers did from 1871 to 1910. Like the previous owners, the Texas prison system still compels captive people to work its fields without pay. Guards on horseback monitor those who labor under the sun in fields of cotton and other crops.
How soon before citizens are press ganged into doing the jobs that immigrants (legal and otherwise) have largely done without much of a fuss? Because I fear that’s what’s coming.
https://lemmy.world/comment/17978093
Prisoners are citizens.
Prisoners can’t fill every need. Also, they aren’t typically used as janitors, which is also largely filled by immigrants. Or wait staff at restaurants, or car wash attendants.
I mean, there’s also the whole “wait staff and car wash attendants aren’t necessary to the survival of a civilization” thing. Crop workers are absolutely vital to the long-term survival of civilization, but we could live perfectly fulfilling lives without car washes or restaurants.
It’s important to remember that the entire world is only 3-5 missed meals away from anarchy. And not the nice “everyone in a neighborhood banding together to protect and feed their neighbors” type of anarchy either.
can’t wait for conservatives to blame the incoming food crisis on immigrants
First quote is the old lie:
“Most Americans don’t want to do this work“ ( at the wages we want to pay)
It’s not a lie and it’s not really the pay, it’s a terrible job that anyone with any other option is going to skip because it sucks and it ruins your body really really fast.
If it paid $30/hr a lot of people would be able to overlook the downsides.
The business was only viable because it could get people to break their backs for peanuts.
Not just peanuts: They could exploit undocumented immigrants by paying them less than minimum wage and abuse them without having to worry about getting sued or deal with paying unemployment insurance.
Industrial farming will never work without cheap labor so either you perfect robots or you look the other way about migrant labor.
Most countries don’t pay their farm workers below local minimum wage, and yet somehow they produce food.
It is often done by foreign workers, though. Just above board, above or at minimum wage, which goes a lot further in their home countries.
Mmm lots do but the government provides subsidies to make up the difference.
Yes, I’d also argue they aren’t actually industrial farming in the same way we are. Most of the us methods are illegal in other countries of similar development.
NOBODY saw this coming.
Grapes of Wrath with extra fascist steps, jfc
You better keep those avocados coming California! Im making chilli
Well, yes. That’s what Americans voted for.
Well, the Stupid-Americans did.
The rest of you vote for it every day with your cowardly inaction (making a sign and going to a parade doesn’t count).
They are the majority of those who went voting.
By like 3% maybe.
Manufactured crisis to enact a police state.
IT’S THE TRANS IMMIGRANTS FAULT
MAGA likes to call the immigrants, “rats” but the truth is far more sinister! They’re transgender mice! Too dangerous to even study in a lab!
The crops stood no chance!
Our only hope is to get rid of accurate hurricane forecasting and health care for the poor and elderly! If by some miracle a few billionaires get a tax break then maybe we’ll make it through this crisis!
Don’t forget that it’s also bankrupting farms which will allow corporations to buy up the land for pennies on the dollar. Land which they can then work with prison labor (AKA slaves). Trump really is making America great again for white oligarchs, anyway.
Not that it was not great for them before.
This is what he really means by make America white again? Did I get this right? Alt right?
