Agro Perspectiva

American farmers are about to turn their backs on Republican Party

03.08.2011 12:26 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) — The Republican Party’s crusade against illegal immigration continues and sometimes its results turn out to be opposite to the ones expected. American agricultural community — the traditional supporter for conservative party- is about to turn its back on its former favorites. The reason is a Republican sponsored bill that would force farmers among other employers to verify the legal immigration status of their workers. The proposal caused outrage in the agricultural community, making farmers across America rally to block the bill. According to the farmers, the new procedure will not only endanger the future harvest but also damage the whole industry. An excessive devotion of the Republicans to the idea of fighting back illegal immigrants may easily cost them crucial votes in the upcoming election. «I think Mr. Smith realizes what his legislation would do to agriculture,» said Steve Pringle, the legislative director for the Texas Farm Bureau, commenting on the bill, proposed by Representative Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Smith’s proposal would require farmers to check all their new workers through E-Verify — a federal database managed by the Department of Homeland Security. E-Verify is currently mandatory only for the federal contractors. But American farmers argue that implementation of the same standards would deal an enormous amount of damage to a $390 billion agriculture industry, totally dependent on the low-wage immigrant workers. For the agricultural industry which dramatically relies on hundreds of thousands of workers it would be totally impossible to survive under the new bill, especially in the harvest periods. The fact that most of the US farm workers have false documents is not a secret to anybody. The implementation of a new procedure has all the chances to paralyze the industry. And all the arguments of the bill supporters turn out to sound totally irrational to the industry leaders. «We could open up millions of jobs for unemployed Americans and legal workers,» claims Lamar Smith insisting that the new measure would prevent immigrants from stealing jobs from the citizens. But experts disagree with the statement, saying that Americans are not willing to do the hard work in the fields. «People just don’t want to do farm work,» says Wegner. «They don’t want to pick berries. They don’t want to pick lettuce. And the pay is just as good as working at the hamburger shop or making up hotel rooms, but they just don’t want to do the work.» The ability of the Republicans to take any reasonable idea to the extreme seems to have finally come back to haunt them. While the loss of couple of days may cost a harvest for the farmers, the loss of farmers’ support may lead to serious problems for the whole Conservative Party.