Iowa Case Highlites Agriculture Industry Hiring Foreign Labor, 47% of US Field Workers

[appalachiablue]

"Iowa Murder Draws Attention To Agriculture Industry's Hiring Of Undocumented Immigrants," USA Today, Aug. 24, '18.

Dane Lang, a co-owner of Yarrabee Farms outside of Brooklyn, Iowa, stood outside his family farm this week and lamented that he had employed the undocumented immigrant charged in the murder of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts.
Then he was asked if any other non-U.S. citizens were among the 10 employees on the dairy farm. "I don't think I can comment to that," Lang said.

That vague answer highlights the worst-kept secret in the agriculture business: roughly half of the nation's 1.4 million field workers (47 percent, or 685,000 workers) are undocumented immigrants. And that estimate, from the Labor Department, is a conservative one with labor experts citing far higher percentages.
While presidents have approached undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. in vastly different ways, Republicans and Democratic administrations- under heavy lobbying from the agricultural industry- have always treated undocumented farm workers differently.

While the federal government was herding more than 100,000 Japanese immigrants into internment camps during World War II, it was also administering the Bracero Program, which allowed millions of Mexicans to enter the U.S. to work on farms. When President Ronald Reagan signed a landmark immigration law in 1986 that granted amnesty to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants, those who worked on farms were given the easiest path to U.S. citizenship..

Chris Chmielenski, deputy director of NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for lower levels of legal and illegal immigration, said that history reflects both the power of the agricultural industry, and the willingness of politicians to help them out. He says the easiest solution would be to require that all U.S. business use E-Verify, which allows employers to check the immigration status of job applicants using a government website. "That would have a pretty big impact on future flows of illegal immigration," he said.

The Iowa farm that employed Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who is charged with first-degree murder in Tibbetts' death, initially said they used that program to screen Rivera, but later backtracked and conceded that they had used a different system not designed to flag immigration violations..

But farmers, ranchers, and other business owners who rely on undocumented immigrants say passing an E-Verify bill would cripple their industries. Already struggling to recruit enough Americans to do the back-breaking field work, and operating under the constant threat of raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they say implementing E-Verify with no other changes to the immigration system would put untold numbers of companies out of business.

That's why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that it would only support mandatory electronic worker verification if it's coupled with an overhaul, and expansion, of the country's guest worker programs. Con't.

MORE, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/iowa-murder-draws-attention-to-agriculture-industrys-hiring-of-undocumented-immigrants/ar-BBMorw0

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Republican hypocrites...as well as slave wages...

I even wonder how many of them are children?

[appalachiablue]

2. Backbreaking work, long hrs., horrid living conditions, abuse & poor wages.

All of which is unknown to most uninformed Americans who yell against 'foreigners, illegals' and more.
The US has brought in workers from Mexico, China, India and elsewhere for more than 100 years, along with domestic prison labor to do the backbreaking work of farming, mining, building railroads, canals, bridges, etc. And many black people, poor whites, Irish workers and other immigrants also toiled to build America since its beginnings.