"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
...
In article ,

That's not the point! If we do what some would like, and eliminate or
severely curtail the flow of "illegals" into this country, how do you
think
we'd replace the labor that they're willing to do? Or, to put it another
way, your 16 year old kid says "Dad, I just got a job. I'll be bent over
in
the sun for 10 hours a day, swinging a very sharp knife at brocolli stems
right near my ankles. The crops are sprayed with some sort of chemical a
few
days before they're picked, but the guy at the interview said the stuff
was
safe to touch. It's four bucks an hour".

You OK with this scenario?

This is BS. Four things would happen. For some of the jobs, Americans
would fill them at the same wage. For others, Americans would fill them
for more money (and the costs of those would go up). Some would be to a
greater or lesser degree mechanized and the rest would disappear.
Probably the latter would be mechanized.

Mechanized: No. Some crops cannot be harvested by machines. If they could,
John Deere would already have machines to do it, and farmers would be
delighted to own them.

As far as costs rising, you've got that right. I suspect it would be
disastrous, especially for people who already have a hard time affording
decent food. How about $5.00 a pound for lettuce, instead of the usual $1.00
to $3.00? We're already in for a big surprise in the grocery business if oil
keeps rising in price. Three years ago, freight rates were in the range of
$1.25 to $1.50 per mile. Now, they're $1.75 to $2.75, depending on direction
of travel and the availability of backhauls.