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SAVE Act, lack of reform are real threats
By Albor Ruiz
It's expensive enough already, but soon we all could be paying more - a
lot more - for the food we put on the table.
Thanks to the Tom Tancredos, the Lou Dobbs and the rest of the
repression-only, anti-immigration crowd, in addition to a price hike, we
can also expect shortages of, among other things, fruit, vegetables,
meat and milk.
Congress and its failure to act on a rational immigration reform
deserves to be thanked also, as well as our would-be Presidents and
their sad spectacle of tripping over each other to show who is the most
"macho" on illegal immigration.
But all this antiimmigration posturing and hysteria has real-life
consequences. And a potential food price hike is only one of them.
The Washington-based Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform made
this clear in a letter it sent to members of Congress on Tuesday. The
group represents more than 300 national, regional and state
organizations of agricultural producers, among them the New York State
Nursery and Landscape Association, the New York State Vegetable Growers
Association and several more from our state.
In the letter, the coalition expressed its strong opposition to the
Secure America With Verification Enforcement Act of 2007 - or SAVE Act -
an enforcement-only bill pending in the House and the Senate. The letter
reminds Congress members that about 80% of the farm labor force in the
U.S. is foreign-born - and that a majority is believed to be
undocumented.
The SAVE Act, among other measures, imposes mandatory electronic
employment eligibility verification. It will screen out the undocumented
farm labor force, but as the coalition points out, it does not address
the question of who will take their place.
The reason is clear: Contrary to anti-immigration rhetoric, there are no
throngs of domestic workers lining up at the farm gates to take over the
jobs the undocumented have performed for years.
"Careful study of farm labor force demographics and trends indicate that
there is not a replacement domestic workforce available to fill these
jobs," the letter said. "This feature alone will result in chaos unless
combined with labor-stabilizing reforms."
Chaos is a pretty strong word. Yet the coalition does not hesitate in
predicting that it will happen if Congress does not pass a comprehensive
immigration reform bill.
Craig Regelbrugge, the coalition co-chairman, says that price hikes and
shortages are just the short-term consequences of an enforcement-only
policy.
"In the long run, consequences are much more serious, threatening the
safety and security of our food supply and the vibrancy of our economy,"
he said. "The real big risk is that labor shortages could force the
producers of our food supply to leave the country."
If this happens, Regelbrugge said, the livelihoods of millions of
Americans whose jobs exist because of the country's agricultural
production would disappear.
"For each farmworker job, three others exist around it," Regelbrugge
said. "Packers, truckdrivers, people who work in shipping and many
others - most of those jobs would also have to move if production is
forced to move out."
Not a pretty picture. But one for which we have Congress and its failure
to act on a rational immigration reform law to thank. And let's not
forget the posturing and hysteria of the Tancredos and the Dobbs who,
after all is said and done, could not care less about the American
people.
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