Just Wondering wrote:
dpb wrote:
Just Wondering wrote:

CW wrote:

Would you be willing to pay $15.00 for an apple? How about $18.00
for a pear? Those who claim that the problem is as simple as
throwing out the illegal either don't live in farm country or are
not paying
attention. Ever
picked apples? I have. You won't find enough Americans to get the
crops in.
You couldn't pay most people enough to do the work. It is not
because of low
pay. A (Mexican) apple picker can easily make $20.00 an hour.
Mexican labor
is what keeps the fruit producers going.


So how did the farmers get their crops in, say, 40 years ago,
before
there was the massive flood of illegals we have now?


Combination -- mostly the itinerants were still around, just there
weren't the other 10-20 M of so besides in the case of the seasonal
picking and so on. Earlier ('30s and so on), there were the Okies
and similar of Steinbeck fame...

The difference now is the US demographics are far different and
welfare programs mean the unemployed don't starve so they
don't/won't work at all in large numbers...

--

If that's true, then the answer isn't turning a blind eye to illegal
aliens, it's changing welfare to workfare.

What I'd like to see is a system where people on Welfare get rewarded
to work. On the current system if you get a minimum-wage job then you
lose more in benefits than you make in wages, so why bother?

Workfare was tried--it was called "WPA" and "CCC" and now it's called
"Pork Barrel Politics".

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)