Labor Squeeze Along the Border
By Miriam Jordan, Wall Street Journal Online, March 12, 2005 (May require subscription)
(Subtitle: A labor shortage among lettuce pickers spotlights one of the
trickiest issues in the immigration debate: how to close the U.S.
border to drugs and terrorists without stopping the flow of illegal
workers who prop up big industries.)
… A former U.S. ambassador and currently the president of a powerful
farming association [Western Growers], Mr. Nassif told [the U.S. Border
Patrol] that the agency couldn’t have picked a worse time to beef up
enforcement. Didn’t they know it was lettuce season? …
What part of “illegal” is the
trickiest for you, Ms. Jordan? But let’s not drag principles into this.
Let’s run those numbers again, Mr. Nassif. (Excuse me: Mr. Ambassador!)
Americans won’t pick lettuce for $5/hr x 40 hr/wk x 50wk/yr =
$10,000/yr? Of course not. They should put in a full day–and week and
year, for that matter. They should be picking lettuce 10hr/day x 6
day/wk x 52 wk/yr. Especially if they like kids. OK, so clever growers
pay $4/hr, max. Still! That’s $12,480/yr.
