Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Cotton Pickin' Criminals

Way down south in the land of cotton,
Ole times there are not forgotten...
The passage of HB-87 seems to have negatively impacted the Georgia agricultural industry's access to plentiful, low-wage and illegal labor. The Governor, who signed HB-87 into law, has offered the suggestion that we press our own home-grown criminals into service to replace the now absent imported criminals. This has been challenged with the suggestion that these probationers "work in the Governor's kitchen", suggesting that the Governor's staff includes illegal aliens. While that may or may not be the case, what we now know is that Georgia's industrial farmers have relied upon the brazen exploitation of illegal immigrants for years.

And let's be honest, we're not talking about "forty acres and a mule here", we're talking about multi-million dollar businesses prospering from government farm subsidies almost as much as they profit from the sweat of these neo-slave laborers. The quaint image of the hardworking Protestant farmer conjured in "American Gothic" simply does not exist and is in no way representative of those whining about their rotting cabbage while they pay expensive lobbyists to stalk the halls of our Legislatures.

Even those well-intentioned supporters of "instant amnesty" for illegal migrants miss the point. Our farm industry wants nothing but illegal workers, as these workers have no recourse against these industrial farmers who use them as modern day slaves. Should someone wave the magic ObamaWand over illegals granting them all rights and privileges thereunto appertaining, they would become instantly unemployed.

It is now painfully clear to everyone, including farmers, that we don't need more unemployable people.