Idaho Dairy Farmers Admit Breaking Immigration Law (Opinion)
“Illegal aliens are doing the jobs Americans won’t do.” How often have you heard that line?
The Idaho Dairy Association readily admit it breaks federal law by employing illegal aliens.
Americans just might do the work if they were told the EBT card would be revoked if they didn’t get their hands dirty. Over the weekend, a liberal national publication called Politico issued a dire warning: The Magic Valley dairy industry will collapse without illegal immigrant labor. The writer also took time to whine about me and my conservative position.
I posted her story to Facebook. What follows are a sampling of replies (including at least two from people involved in agriculture):
“Do the illegals actually believe the Dairy’s care about them? All they care about is their willingness to work long hrs in sketchy work environments. It’s all about the money.”
“I'm not easily offended but this pushes the limit. The Idaho Dairy Association readily admit it breaks federal law by employing illegal aliens. (that is actually the legal term) Their rational is no "Americans" will do these jobs. They are right. Americans have rights in the labor force. Rights not given to illegal aliens because of their status. Wages, hours worked, unemployment insurance, workplace injuries. Employers who hire illegals regularly ignore these. This is how they do things cheaply. My solution is to dump all able bodied people off of welfare and into the work force. Give them a list of industries hiring and tell them they have 90 days to secure a job before they lose their "benefits". A lot of these jobs Americans supposedly won't do, were being done by Americans, including my family, long before illegal aliens came here.”
“Washington DC has and is meddling any many areas of this dilemma (labor law, milk/cheese money support), agriculture has bought into the system as they have felt forced to do so.....but they keep electing the same Establishment representation - THAT WILL NOT DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM! Like many other areas, we know it is illegal, we know we hire illegals (use of fake documents), we need it this way. Is it like being addicted to prescription pain killers and obtaining the drug through illegal means because 'I need it'?!! This has been building for decades - Big Money (not necessarily Ag) likes cheap labor - if you provide a Legal means cheap labor won't be so cheap.”
“I think they'd write a huge article on the abuses of Hispanic undocumented laborers at dairies, when their illegal status kept them from moving up and enabled their exploitation in these "brutal, dangerous conditions" if Trump were advocating a "nothing to see here" policy of ICE enforcement. They'd be all about the racism, exploitation.”