What did you have for breakfast today? Maybe it was a little bacon and eggs, or maybe you had some nice pancakes, or perhaps some cereal, maybe you had a nice bowl of fruit. Where did you go on vacation last year, some nice hotel, perhaps a cruise, maybe you stayed at a small motor inn. Last weekend when you went out for dinner where did you go, a nice restaurant or perhaps a small greasy spoon. The house you are living in, who built it?
You might think that these questions are not related, but they all have one thing in common. You would not be able to eat, would not be able to stay at any hotel, or eat at many restaurants, or even be able to live in your house without one important group of people. Immigrants.
Your typical Dumbass here.
People here on Cape Cod probably don’t think a lot about where their food comes from. Most of it comes from some place else, mostly the Mid-West and California. And almost all of it was picked by a migrant worker. Most of them in this country illegally.
With the lettuce harvest beginning, farmers in the $1 billion winter vegetable industry are panicking about getting their crops out of the ground. Vegetable growers estimate they could be 32,000 workers short of the 54,000 they need for the winter harvest, which runs until March. Last year, local farmers left hundreds of acres of lettuce in the fields because they lacked the manpower to harvest it.
Worker shortages have swept the Western agriculture industry, bringing $300 million in losses to raisin growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley in September and causing consternation about this winter’s harvest from the Christmas tree farms of Oregon to the melon fields of Arizona.
“Today I have approximately 290 people working in the field,” Jon Vessey said recently. Vessey runs an 8,000-acre winter vegetable farm with his son, Jack, near El Centro, Calif. “I should have 400, and for the harvest I need 1,100. . . . There’s a disaster coming.”
Next time you go to a restaurant, try and find out who is washing your dishes, or cooking your food. You may be surprised to find out that these jobs are predominately done by immigrants, many of them illegal.
Several days ago when rumor of an illegal immigrant round up spread across the country many construction companies had to shut down, why? Because so many of their illegal immigrant workers didn’t show up for work that they didn’t have enough workers to build anything.
The meat you eat for breakfast, all got packed by, you guessed it, immigrants, many illegal.
The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has grown to nearly 12 million, according to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center. Pew says that illegal immigrants make up nearly five percent of the labor force. About 20 percent of that population works in construction, and four percent is employed in agriculture.
From here.
Today is a national protest. Illegal, and legal immigrants alike will be staying home today, and not buying anything. They are doing this to show just how much they contribute to the economy.
The current administration’s plan to turn being an illegal into a felony it simply unrealistic. The estimates of illegal immigrants in this country range from 10-12 million! people. That is about 3 percent of the American population. To find and imprison (or even just return them to their home country) them all would cost billions of dollars, and would require a quasi-police state environment.
Do you want to be stopped at a walmart and asked for your “papers?” Do you want to be on a plane during a “routine sweep.” Or perhaps you would like to have to prove your citizenship every time you fill up at the gas pump? Maybe these sound harsh but how else will you round up 12 million people?
Its just not going to work. Instead we should embrace these workers that make our lives much better, we should embrace these people that add so much to our culture, and our economy. We should allow them to get all the same things our Irish, German, Russian, Italian, Etc ancestors got when they came to this country for a better life. Take a look in the mirror, are you a native American? If not then you have an immigrant to thank for your place in the world.
Today a national protest will be taking place where immigrants (illegal and legal) will be staying home from work to show just how much of the American economy is effected by immigrant labor. I know of at least one shop on Cape that had signs up saying they would be closed today. And I hope more join in.
The house Republicans plan for these people (and we are talking about real human beings here) would create a world of a permanent poor underclass of people that are forbidden by law to ever get ahead. While filling our jails with people who’s only crime was wanting to work hard.
We need a law that allows people to work here legally and return to their home country when they want to, at the same time allowing those that wish to stay a legal and easy way to become citizens. We should invest in Mexico and South America to create jobs there so that these people will not have to make the dangerous journey to America just to feed their family. Our voice can make a difference, call your rep, call your senator, send an email, let them know how you feel.