Washington State Now Using Inmates to Pick Apples

Washington apple growers have been unable to find enough migrant workers to pick their crops inspite of a wide-spread campagn to recruit pickers.  This is a side effect of the anti-immigration movement nation wide since nearly 400,000 undocumented workers are being deported annually.

Photo:  The Wenatchee World

State apple growers sounded an alarm in recent weeks of a severe shortage of pickers. Signs were put up at orchards. Ads were taken out on radio. Newspapers and TV stations reported the story of the shortage after Gov. Chris Gregoire put out a call for help. Many unemployed workers did apply for jobs, but few stayed.

"It's hard work," she said. There are seven guards to make sure the inmate workers stay on the job until it's done, but it's an expensive proposition for the grower, Wilis admits. McDougall will pay $22 an hour for each inmate. Inmates are paid minimum wage, but deductions for crime compensation, incarceration costs, child support and other bills reduces that to between $1 and $2 an hour. Most of what growers are charged pays for transportation, housing and security. Most inmates picked three or four 800-pound bins of apples in that first day.

So again, we find evidence that undocumented immigrants are not taking jobs away from "normal citizens".  American citizens just don't want to do this kind of work, even if they are out of a job.  And with 9 percent of us officially unemployed, that's a lot of people unwilling to take such a job.

Read more:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016670717_apwainmateapplepickers1stldwritethru.html

Alabama vs. Arizona - Which law is worse for immigrants?

Now in a contest to see which state can drive the hispanics out the quickest, Alabama is winning.  See who is leaving and why.  Are they all illegals, or undocumented ( sin papeles )?  Are they working hard or are they lazy?  Will this open up new jobs for unemployed citizens - putting Americans back to work?  What is the effect on our economy? on individuals caught up in the histeria?

Pedro and his wife, both of whom are undocumented immigrants, decided to put all their belongings in the car and leave with their son for Arizona. Even with its SB 1070 immigration law, they expect Arizona to treat them better than Alabama under its law HB 56.
In a housing complex full of small homes in the city of Florence, two hours from Birmingham, relatives and friends said goodbye to Pedro and his family as they packed and checked the brakes of their car in preparation for the long ride.
Pedro, a construction worker from the state of Guerrero, Mexico, lived in Alabama for seven years. "If it weren't for the law, I'd stay here, but I have a brother there (in Arizona) who says that everything's okay now and there are plenty of jobs," he said.
Life in Alabama is impossible, he told me, and he wasn't confident that the attempts to block the law through the courts would succeed. And even if it did, the immigrant community faces too hostile an environment here to stay, he added.
"You can't drive anywhere; you can't go out because all it takes is seeing a policeman to scare you", Pedro said.
This strategy of wearing down the immigrant community through draconian laws like HB 56 -attrition through enforcement-- is exactly the point for those who have written and endorsed these laws.

Pedro's story echoed those we heard from other immigrants gathered at his house. Some wonder if they should follow his path out of the state or weather the storm here and see if anything changes.
The mosaic of situations reflects how HB 56 has affected everyone, with and without documents alike.
Some undocumented immigrants have native-born U.S. citizen children. Some have undocumented children, some of whom were brought to Alabama as babies. That describes Lizbeth, Pedro's niece, a 19-year-old "Dreamer" (a student who would be eligible for the DREAM Act) who was brought here when she was 2 months old. She married an undocumented young man, and had a baby. Some couples are mixed-status as well--such as Katie, a young woman who was born in Alabama, and her partner, Freddy, an undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. at the age of eleven. They have three children--all of them native-born citizens--and another on the way. And so on.
The person who'd arrived most recently of those we talked to had been in Alabama for five years. Others have been here for ten, eleven, thirteen, sixteen, twenty. Some are renters; some own their own homes. Everyone has a job: in hotels, cleaning offices and stores, in food processing plants, in the fields doing farm labor, in construction.
But for those without documents HB 56 turns driving to work into Russian roulette. "You're playing it every time, but you have to go to work because it's your responsibility to do it. For my wife and my baby girl, because Pampers don't buy themselves," said Lizbeth's husband, who works in a sawmill.
"Every morning, I have to leave thinking that I've left my sleeping child, and this could be the last time I get to see her," he said
Pedro's sister embodies many immigrants' fear of doing basic tasks, like buying food or going to the doctor. "Yesterday made about four weeks since I last went to the store. My children are eating only corn flakes and fruit because I'm afraid to go out. The day before yesterday the children came down with a bad case of the flu, but I couldn't take them to see the pediatrician, because I'm afraid to go out," she said.

Lizbeth said that "if it's my turn to get taken away, well, it's my turn." "I work all day cleaning stores with my mother. I drive her. I leave my daughter with my aunt, and all I can think of is that if they arrest me, and if I can't come back to see her, it would break my heart. This law is tearing a lot of families apart. We're not here to hurt anyone. We need help to get rid of this law because it's not doing anything good for Alabama, it's hurting the economy," she added.
Katie, the Alabama native, believes that the law is racist. If immigrants are working, "let them work and take care of their families, don't close the door on them." She had a message for the politicians who support the law: "You're so awful! Hispanics are helping out a lot here in Alabama." "And I have a message for Obama. Please, help Hispanics. They helped you."
Lizbeth's husband said that "if the governor says he signed the law to open up jobs for Americans who could do the work immigrants have been doing, why has the economy started slumping so quickly? We're seeing a labor shortage all over the place and no one is coming out to shop in stores because everyone's leaving."

He works at the mill from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., for $7.25 an hour. "I can't tell you how many Hispanics have lost fingers or hands. I also worked as a roofer, on houses that were sometimes 2, 3 stories. It's dangerous work, and in the summer, when the shingles are hot, it's very hard. If Americans can do the jobs that we've done, how come nobody's showing up to take the jobs we've left in the chicken farms and the fields?" he asked.

Journalist Gabriel Thompson wrote the book Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing The Jobs (Most) Americans Won't Do, in which he recounts his experiences doing the harsh labor immigrants take on for little money and under precarious conditions.

Thompson worked in a chicken processing plant in Russellville, Alabama, near Florence. In a recent article for ColorLines on HB 56 and how immigration had benefited Russellville, he wrote that "When I relocated to Russellville in 2008, I found that, as a citizen, it was exceedingly easy to 'steal' a job back...As I soon learned, the hard part wasn't getting the job; the hard part was keeping the job. During a single shift I could be asked to tear apart more than 7,000 chicken breasts by hand or carry and dump 30 tons of meat onto an assembly line."
Thompson wrote that immigration had helped Russellville in various ways, including stimulating the economy as consumers and business owners. The same can be said for other parts of the state.

Read more from this source: The Huffington Post

New Alabama Law: Crops rot in the field

Nueva ley de inmigración de Alabama.  Es el más severa de los EEUU.  Los partidarios dicen que la norma debe producir más trabajo para los ciudadanos mientras que las voces criticas aseguran que saca los derechos civiles. Pero la cosecha se pudre en los campos y los agricultores no pueden encontrar trabajadores suficientes para cosechar, porque la mayoría de los trabajadores - legales y sin papeles - han salido los trabajos y han huido.  Tambien, los administradores de cárceles se preocupan que no tienen espacio ni capacidad para detener más personas.

New immigration law in Alabama.  It's the most severe in the US.  Supporters say that the rule should produce more work for citizens while critics claim that it robs some of civil rights.  But food is rotting in the fields and farmers are unable to find sufficient workers to harvest their crops, since most of the workers have left their jobs and departed from the area.  Jail administrators are also concerned since they don't have the capacity to hold detainees.

They just don't want to work farm jobs - No quieren un trabajo en el campo

U.S. Farmers can't find enough Citizens to harvest our crops. Even unemployed people won't go out in the field and work at these labor-intensive positions. Granted, it is not easy work, but people complain that we have over 9% unemployed and blame the immigrants for their woes. This is nothing new, we've always found a foreign scapegoat. It's easier to blame others.

Larry Kleinman on Illegal Farm Workers

As the annual sweet corn harvest season ends, Colorado farmer, John Harold has learned something very interesting as it relates to the immigrant labor work ethic.
When the season started in July Harold decided not to hire legal Mexican migrants with a H2A visas but opted to hire locally.  He was motivated to do so seeing the local unemployment rate at 9.8% and some hirer costs getting visa workers.  With that decision he saw lines of applicants but few that could do the work and even fewer that stayed to do the work.
Typically he hires 150 seasonal migrant workers to hand pick the corn and pays them $10.48/hour, the same rate he was offering his new hires.  The result was for every three U.S. citizens he hired only one stayed.  As of last Thursday he just has 39 workers instead of the 150 he needs. 
He has documented every resignation and the fact that he has been advertising throughout Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma for these positions.  Harold will be taking those facts to his local Senator and advocating for immigration reform.  Harold concluded: “You have to understand there is a work ethic of migrant laborers that is just not found with local labor.”

See more of this and other articles on immigration: http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/something-to-think-about-u.s.-farmer-cant-find-u.s.-citizens-to-replac/

Irish Immigrants: Send them HOME !

They are stealing our jobs.  They aren't paying any taxes.  They are a drain on our society.  They are having babies so they can claim social services and stay in our country.  They don't speak our language.  Send them HOME !

Irish Immigrants 1860s

In 1845, the great potato rot touched off a mass migration. The disaster eliminated the sole subsistence of millions of peasants, thrusting them over the edge of starvation. For five weary years, the crops remained undependable, and famine swept through the land. Untold thousands perished, and the survivors, destitute of hope, wished only to get away (Handlin, 1972).
The only mode of escape was emigration. Starving families that could not pay landlords faced no alternative but to leave the country in hopes of a better future. And thus the steadily scaling number of Irish who entered the U.S. between 1820 and 1830 skyrocketed in the 1840s, nearly 2 million came in that decade. The flow persisted increasingly for another five years, as the first immigrants began to earn the means of sending for relatives and friends. The decade after 1855 showed a subside in the movement, but smaller numbers continued to arrive after the Civil War. Altogether, almost 3.5 million Irishmen entered the U.S. between 1820 and 1880.
Emigrating to the U.S. wasn't the magical solution for most of the immigrants. Peasants arrived without resources, or capital to start farms or businesses. Few of them ever accumulated the resources to make any meaningful choice about their way of life. Fortunately for them, the expansion of the American economy created heavy demands for muscle grunt. The great canals, which were the first links in the national transportation system were still being dug in the 1820s and 1830s, and in the time between 1830 and 1880, thousands of miles of rail were being laid. With no bulldozers existing at the time, the pick and the shovel were the only earth-moving equipment at the time. And the Irish laborers were the mainstay of the construction gangs that did this grueling work. In towns along the sites of work, groups of Irish formed their small communities to live in.
More than 2.6 million Irish came in the decades after 1860.

Source: 
http://library.thinkquest.org/20619/Irish.html

German Immigrants: Send them HOME

We have heard it all before:  "They are stealing our jobs.  They aren't paying any taxes.  They are a drain on our society.  They are having babies so they can claim social services and stay in our country.  They don't speak our language.  Send them HOME !" - whereever that is.

German immigrants 1911

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Mass Deportation of Immigrants: Now on Fast Track in Congress

By Lynn Tramonte

Americas Voice

Bisbee_deportation_guns.jpg‎ (682 × 419 pixels, file size: 83 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Two of the masterminds behind the GOP's mass deportation (of immigrants) strategy, Representatives Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and Elton Gallegly (R-CA), chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, are introducing new legislation intended to bring about their extremist fantasy: the expulsion of 11 million undocumented immigrants and their families.  That's what their whole "enforcement only" approach is all about - tighten the screws on immigrant families while blocking any hope of being able to legalize their status.
The Republicans’ dark vision for immigration “reform” isn’t playing well with Latino voters.  But in addition to alienating Latinos, Smith and Gallegly are on a path that will also hurt U.S. workers and key industries -- like agriculture -- by forcing all employers to use the flawed E-Verify system when evaluating whether an employee is legal to work.
In a recent op-ed, the duo tries to sell E-Verify as a "successful tool for employers."  With a fail rate of 50%, E-Verify is anything but successful.  We all want to crack down on unscrupulous employers who take advantage of workers, but that's not what E-Verify does. Instead, E-Verify will give bad employers even more control over desperate workers who move off the books and into the cash economy, reducing tax revenue and expanding the exploitation of workers.
The consequences of mandatory E-Verify aren’t limited to immigrant workers.  The Smith/Gallegly E-Verify plan would cause almost 800,000 Americans to lose their jobs due to errors in the government databases; force an additional 4 million legal workers into an administrative quagmire; create an undue burden on small businesses; nearly wipe out the agricultural workforce; and result in loss of tax revenue, increasing the deficit.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that mandatory, nationwide E-Verify would cost us $17.3 billion over 10 years because it would increase the number of undocumented workers being paid outside the tax system. Just implementing the program, according to the CBO, would cost $23 billion over ten years.
Mandatory E-Verify would also have a devastating impact on industries that rely on immigrant labor, like agriculture.  By cracking down on immigrant farm workers, Smith and Gallegly’s vision would lead to the exportation of farms and jobs and the increased importation of food from foreign sources.  The loss of on-farm jobs would also have a domino effect: 3.2 million non-agriculture jobs depend on the agriculture industry.
All these problems, and the program only identifies undocumented workers 50% of the time. Despite all this, there is a real possibility that some version of E-Verify will advance, especially in the House of Representatives.
The Smith/Gallegly strategy is to ignore the faults and cost of the system, its impact on the economy, and its burden on U.S. workers—and insist that E-Verify will "free up" jobs and force undocumented immigrants to "deport themselves." The reality is that most undocumented immigrants will remain here, even more in the shadows of the underground economy, subject to exploitation and reduced labor standards that impact everyone.
What's frustrating is that there's a better solution staring Smith and Gallegly right in the face. Comprehensive immigration reform, which would combine border and workplace enforcement with a program to require undocumented immigrants to register for legal status, would raise wages and labor standards for all workers, boost tax revenues, and gut the underground economy.  This is a fiscally responsible solution—and a practical alternative to the Smith-Gallegly mass deportation fantasy.  What’s more, a majority of Americans support it.

See more this and other articles:  http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/e-verify/

Comments

E-Verify fails to detect illegal aliens: 54% failure rate

Raul A. Reyes responds to the L.A. Times Op-Ed article on E-Verify:

"Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) advocate the mandatory use of E-Verify to preserve jobs for Americans and crack down on illegal immigration. As a supporter of comprehensive reform, I read their Op-Ed article with great interest and was disheartened by their faulty reasoning, especially in light of the considerable influence the two members of Congress wield over our nation's immigration policy."

He adds that in a test of the system by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, it was found that E-Verify cleared 54% of undocumented workers to work... and that the Department of Homeland Security estimates it would have to spend $765 million on staff, technology and training if the program were to go national and small businesses would have to pay about $2.6 BILLION each year to use the program."

It is clear the intent is not to create jobs for U.S. workers.  Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) are trying to deport as  many immigrants as quickly as possible, before a way can be found for them to work toward becoming citizens.

We are all Americans

Miguel, a friend of ours, lived and worked in the U.S. for 3 years with a green card - legally, that is.  Part of his work here involved helping other immigrants make the adjustments to a new culture, finding housing, work, understanding what was expected of them.  He has a unique perspective, having worked with immigrants who both wanted to assimilate and continue living here legally, as well as some who just came for a short term job and were more interested in returning to their families in Mexico as soon as possible.  Miguel himself, returned a few years ago to his family in Cuernavaca, Mex. where he continues to teach.  He writes:

The field of immigration is a large, historical one, with many branches to follow.  But what if one day all these Hispanics return home? We know what would happen; much industry would stop because the anglos will not work those job.  The cost of producing goods and services would be affected by leaps and bounds, if that happened.

In my opinion there are jobs for all.  However, many anglos  have and do business with Hispanics, and have increased their business because of that. Hispanics are in every area of ​​the U.S. working to conserve a source of employment and I think those Hispanics who achieve citizenship would be very grateful to the United States as a country that offered them a source of income.

In this issue of immigration no one loses and everyone wins. We are all Americans and as Americans we share a little of what there is for each person, without that wealth being accumulated by just a single person.

What are you thinking? Comment here.

Come join the party! Leaving southern Mexico in the morning.

Come join the party!  We're getting together for a couple of drinks - 2 beers for 500 of us for the next 6 weeks.  We are leaving Chiapas (southern Mexico) in the morning for the United States.  There is a cover charge of        $ 10,000 US.  but I'm sure you wont have any trouble coming up with this, since you are making enough pesos working in the field under the hot sun.  You surely must have enough to cover this little expense.

We're almost full so hurry!

See other pictures of immigration around the world.  You will begin to see the Big Picture:  http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/06/immigration.html

Click to add your COMMENTS.

I hate all crackers.

The crackers are taking all our jobs and eating all our corn.  We need a fence to keep them out.

Well maybe we should make it against the law for crackers to come here. 

Farmers: E-Verify a disaster for Americans

It sounds like the E-verify program, by itself, would cause a sudden and disastrous change in our way of doing things in America. 

Photo:  tribwekchron.com

If 80% of our farm workers are illegal immigrants, and if we suddenly enforce the laws which keep the farmers from hiring them, what happens to the food?  What happens to the farmers?  What happens to the illegals?  What happens to us when we want to buy groceries or eat a meal?

Will farmers just lose their farms?  Will the banks that have loaned money to the farmers foreclose on the farms?  Do the banks want the farmland?  What will it cost Americans to buy all our food imported from Mexico?  Will the farmers go on welfare? -- they may not be trained in office jobs and most of our factory jobs have already been sent abroad.

Most farmers will tell you that in their efforts to hire workers, they can't find enough legal workers to harvest their crops - or should we say "OUR" crops, since we are the consumers of those crops?

Alicia A. Caldwell from the Associated Press highlights the dilemna we face in answering these questions:

The agriculture industry fears a disaster on the horizon if the bit of new immigration policy that Congress seems to agree on becomes law.
A plan to require all American businesses to check their employees through E-Verify, a program that confirms that each is legally entitled to work in the U.S., could wreak havoc on an industry where 80 percent of the field workers are illegal immigrants.
"We are headed toward a train wreck," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat whose district includes agriculture-rich areas.
Lofgren said that farmers want to hire legal workers and U.S. citizens but that it's nearly impossible given the relatively low wages and back-breaking work.
Wages can range from minimum wage to more than $20 an hour. But workers are often paid by the piece; the faster they work, they more they make. A steady income lasts only as long as the planting and harvesting seasons.
"Few citizens express interest, in large part because this is hard, tough work," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak said last week. "Our broken immigration system offers little hope for producers to do the right thing."
Last year the United Farm Workers launched a Take Our Jobs campaign to entice Americans into the fields. But President Arturo Rodriguez said that of about 86,000 inquiries, only 11 workers took jobs.
"That really was thought up by farmworkers trying to figure out what is it we needed to do to show that we are not trying to take away anyone's job," Rodriguez said.
Manuel Cunha, president of Nisei Farmers League, a group representing growers in Central California, said farmers don't have the wherewithal to verify workers' status.
"If we were to use E-Verify now, we'd shut down -- either that or farmers would go to prison," said Cunha, a Fresno-based citrus farmer.
Shawn Coburn, a politically active farmer who grows thousands of acres of almonds in west Fresno County, said he favors tighter borders, a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for those already in the U.S., or at the very least their children. But, like Cunha, he believes that a mandatory E-Verify plan would be nothing but trouble for the industry.
"I don't think it's going to happen, but if it does it would throw the California economy for a loop," Coburn said.
Without a broad policy overhaul in the works, industry officials have focused on improving the H-2A temporary agricultural workers visa program, which is aimed at allowing seasonal workers to work on U.S. farms.
The program, is costly, time-consuming and inefficient, however, according to Cathleen Enright, vice president of federal government affairs for the Western Growers Association.
Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association said the H-2A program "is too expensive, it's too litigious, it's too bureaucratic.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said farmers in his area want to do the right thing and hire legal workers but are frustrated with the stifling bureaucracy that comes with the visa program.
"It's a labyrinthine visa process, with the slow walking of applications," Gowdy said.
"You could not by accident come up with a better plan to ruin the small family farm."
Farmers, he said, "are just at their wits' end."

H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers

Could you meet the requirements of this program, if you wanted to hire some help?

Perhaps if you ran a company the size of Google or Microsoft, you could afford the research and paperwork necessary to prove these requirements.  But get real, folks.  99% of businesses can't afford the costs of meeting the hurdles of this H-2A program.  Here is what  the Dept of Homeland Security's site:  U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has to say about hiring temporary farm workers, if you want to do it legally:


The H-2A program allows U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs for which U.S. workers are not available. 

To qualify for H-2A non immigrant classification:

• The job offered must be of a temporary or seasonal nature
• The employer must demonstrate that there are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work
• The employer must show that the employment of H-2A workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers

Agriculture Worker Visa Program for migrant workers

How easy is it to find agricultural workers who are legally in the US?  According to D.A. King of the Gwinnett Daily Post  it sounds fairly easy and profitable.  "An ag employer (farmer) can bring to the U.S. as many legal workers as he wants under the H2A Agriculture Worker Visa program."  

We'd love to hear from some farmers who have tried this program.  What were the obstacles?  Did it cost you more?  Was it worth the price?  Did you, or could you pass on these costs to your customers?  How many workers did you bring in under this program?  What does it mean to "bring in" ?  Did you have to go to Mexico (or elsewhere) to find workers, or just sign up with the government as a "host" for foreign workers?  Did you pay for them to come?  Would you use this method again to find workers?  How hard is it for you to find U.S. citizens to work for you?  What are your crops?
=========================================

Article By
   D. A. King

There is currently much consternation and hand wringing over the fact that the Georgia legislature may actually move to protect jobs by clamping down on illegal hiring with the no-cost federal E-Verify system. But a key component of the story is not widely known.
The argument du jour from the usual suspects opposed to enforcement is that Georgia would somehow lose its agriculture industry if we comply with the federal law making employment of illegal aliens well, you know — illegal.
While the media have faithfully reported on the agriculture angle, the existence of the legal alternative to continuing to hire black market farm laborers who have escaped capture at our borders has so far eluded mention.
It is something called the H2A agricultural worker visa.
This agricultural program establishes lawful means for agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring an unlimited number — no ceiling! — of temporary foreign workers into the United States.
But the grateful, legal, temporary workers looking for a better life must be treated with dignity and respect. Employers must provide free housing that meets lawful safety and health standards and provide workers’ compensation insurance to workers at no cost to the worker.
The wage for H2A workers must be the same as that for U.S. workers. The rate must also be at least as high as the applicable prevailing wage rate the wage.
The employer must provide either three meals a day to each worker or furnish free and convenient cooking and kitchen facilities for workers to prepare their own meals. If meals are provided, then the employer may charge each worker a certain amount per day for the three meals.
These requirements obviously make hiring the more “flexible” and desperate illegal labor considerably more profitable. And there is little fear of federal punishment.
An H2A visa is usually issued for a period of one year and can be extended by two one-year extensions for a maximum of three years. Then the temporary workers must return to their home country — making them poor prospects for creating a resentful “oppressed” and “victimized” political constituency willing to march in American streets demanding legalization.
The concept that illegal workers are integral in or necessary for Georgia’s largest industry is complete fertilizer.
Readers may want to pass the H2A facts on to their state lawmakers and remind them that illegal immigration is a direct result of illegal employment.
And that with E-Verify — and courageous vigilance — we have the tools to stop illegal hiring.
D.A. King is a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration and president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for enforcement of immigration and employment laws. He has been an authorized E-Verify user since 2005

Read more from the Source: http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/opinion/headlines/KING_E-Verify_not_a_risk_to_our_agriculture_114331934.html?storySection=story

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA): Chair of House Immigration Subcommittee

By Matt Hildreth of America's Voice

The worst thing about Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA) might not be his extremist views towards immigrants and immigration policy. Don’t get me wrong, they’re bad—I mean really bad. But the absolute worst thing about Gallegly has to be his incredible influence in Washington.
And when it comes to immigration policy, Gallegly takes full advantage of his position as the top Republican in charge of setting immigration policy to push his fringed agenda.
As chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee, he used our nation’s economic crisis to push for the mass deportation of millions, an idea that would make his home state of California even more broke than it already is.
And even though has more power over immigration polices than any other Republican in Congress, many people in his own district, let alone California, don’t even know who he is.

Read more of this and other articles:
http://americasvoiceonline.org/blog/entry/the_worst_thing_about_rep._elton_gallegly_r-ca/

E-Verify: a dagger in the heart of Agriculture

By Mahwish Khan
[Last weeks] Supreme Court ruling to uphold Arizona’s law requiring state businesses use the E-Verify system strikes a crushing blow to the Arizona agriculture industry.  If other states follow Arizona’s lead, or if Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) gets his wish and rams through a mandatory E-Verify law this summer, it will be the beginning of the end for American farms, domestic food sources, and related jobs held by Americans in production, processing, transportation, and marketing. In the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform at the federal level, mandatory E-Verify will deport farms and jobs. This will hurt all Americans.


According to Lynn Tramonte, Deputy Director of America’s Voice Education Fund:

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling is a dagger in the heart of Arizona agriculture.  If this type of law spreads nationwide, we will essentially deport the entire agriculture industry—including jobs held by Americans—and be forced to import more of our nation’s food supply.  Passing a mandatory E-Verify law without comprehensive immigration reform will kill American jobs and farms, burden small businesses, reduce tax revenue, and drive undocumented workers further underground. 

http://americasvoiceonline.org/blog/entry/arizona_e-verify_law_supreme_courts_immigration_decision/