Immigration

Farmers Say Crops Are Rotting Because of Trump’s Immigrant Crackdown

Written by SK Ashby

Just as the harvesting season heats up, farmers in California are struggling to find workers because Trump's anti-immigrant crackdown has driven so many anyway.

The situation has reportedly become so bad, some crops are rotting on the vine before farmers can hire enough people to harvest them.

via Fortune:

Farmers say they're having trouble hiring enough people to work during harvest season, causing some crops to rot before they can be picked. Already, the situation has triggered losses of more than $13 million in two California counties alone, according to NBC News. [...]

To make the jobs more attractive, farmers are offering salaries above minimum wage, along with paid time off and 401(k) plans, but even that's not proving enough.

Trump has only been in office for seven months and this is only going to get worse over time. It's hard for me to imagine the sadistic ICE agents empowered by Trump will be leashed until Trump is out of office and it will take time to change the culture even after he's gone.

It's quite clear that Congress needs to retake control of immigration policy because relying on the executive branch to exercise better judgment leads to outcomes like this.

Ideally, we wouldn't have a man like Trump sitting the White House, but this is far too important to leave it up to the White House alone. We don't know who the next president will be or what his or her priorities will be.