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HIGHGATE, Vt. -- A room off the milking parlor of a sprawling farm near the U.S.-Canada border offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the changing face of Vermont's dairy industry.
A Spanish-language soap opera plays on a small TV atop the refrigerator. Bags of corn flour for tortillas are piled high in a basket across the room from bunk beds. "Dios bendiga esta casa" (God bless this house) is scrawled above the door of the room, home to a Guatemalan man and a Mexican couple. A pregnant Mexican woman still in knee-high rubber boots is visited by Nancy Sabin, a volunteer who finds dairy farm jobs for Hispanic workers
Greed, pure and simple. Why don't these farmers hire legitimate immigrants? Why not hire seasonal help with the proper documents? If this is as large of a need as they say then clearly bringing back the temporary work visa for farm hands and the like needs to be done. Until then, it would behoove these Vermonters to actually look beyond the 'easy' and do a little legwork when hiring, perhaps going so far as to actively recruiting people who are still in Mexico yet able/willing to get the proper documents in order to work in the US.
Which I don't see the farmers as willing to do. Not just because its a pain and harder but because they would then be held accountable to OSHA standards and paying a living/competetive wage. Legal immigrants, even those here on temp. work visas have more of an expectation to be treated fairly. Illegals by their very status are vulnerable to many abuses, abuses that I'm sure said farmers are very familiar with.
Greed, pure and simple. Why don't these farmers hire legitimate immigrants? Why not hire seasonal help with the proper documents? If this is as large of a need as they say then clearly bringing back the temporary work visa for farm hands and the like needs to be done. Until then, it would behoove these Vermonters to actually look beyond the 'easy' and do a little legwork when hiring, perhaps going so far as to actively recruiting people who are still in Mexico yet able/willing to get the proper documents in order to work in the US.
Which I don't see the farmers as willing to do. Not just because its a pain and harder but because they would then be held accountable to OSHA standards and paying a living/competetive wage. Legal immigrants, even those here on temp. work visas have more of an expectation to be treated fairly. Illegals by their very status are vulnerable to many abuses, abuses that I'm sure said farmers are very familiar with.
Exactly!!! Why not hire workers that are literally "a dime a dozen" for less than preferable wages and count on the American Taxpayer to provide for their health care, etc?
Greed, pure and simple. Why don't these farmers hire legitimate immigrants? Why not hire seasonal help with the proper documents? If this is as large of a need as they say then clearly bringing back the temporary work visa for farm hands and the like needs to be done. Until then, it would behoove these Vermonters to actually look beyond the 'easy' and do a little legwork when hiring, perhaps going so far as to actively recruiting people who are still in Mexico yet able/willing to get the proper documents in order to work in the US.
Which I don't see the farmers as willing to do. Not just because its a pain and harder but because they would then be held accountable to OSHA standards and paying a living/competetive wage. Legal immigrants, even those here on temp. work visas have more of an expectation to be treated fairly. Illegals by their very status are vulnerable to many abuses, abuses that I'm sure said farmers are very familiar with.
I'm bothered by the trend here towards farms hiring more and more illegals (when it wasn't that long ago that most hired mostly locals). However, milk prices have dropped so low most of VT's dairy farms are just barely holding on, and a large portion will soon be bankrupt. It's a pretty big issue in the local news here, the farms' problems, one of the few things that has usually done reasonably well here (that's relative, farming has never been very profitable here, but it's done better than industry of any sort), the entire state economy is crumbling apart (and it's always been bad to begin with)...and our legislators have spent their time focused on gay marriage, impeaching Bush, etc., and now they're hammering the last nail in the coffin with increased taxes on everything, driving out the nuclear plant likely, and other stupid things...
Complete B.S. PA dairy farmers don't seem to need illegal labor. That said lets examine whats happening to America's dairy farmers. They receive $13.00 for a hundred pounds of milk. 12 pounds to a gallon. That is the same price they got in 1981....
A comparable tractor in 1981 cost about 8 grand.Today that same tractor is around 40g.
Yet we worry about providing cell phones to welfare recipients. We worry about sending 800 million to rebuild gaza.
We worry about providing translators for the children of illegals.
What is wrong with this picture?
Complete B.S. PA dairy farmers don't seem to need illegal labor. That said lets examine whats happening to America's dairy farmers. They receive $13.00 for a hundred pounds of milk. 12 pounds to a gallon. That is the same price they got in 1981....
A comparable tractor in 1981 cost about 8 grand.Today that same tractor is around 40g.
Yet we worry about providing cell phones to welfare recipients. We worry about sending 800 million to rebuild gaza.
We worry about providing translators for the children of illegals.
What is wrong with this picture?
Basically, it's costing more to produce the milk than it sells for. Same price as the 1980's? Yeah, that's the problem. Factor in inflation and they're getting less...
Yet we're importing food at dirt cheap prices from third world countries at the same time...
I don't care who "counts" on them or not - they need to go.
All businesses will find some way to make do.
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Vermont dairy farms count on illegal immigrants
