[sugarpimpdorsey]

> I mean when, for example, you clear out the agriculture workers of the U.S. without any thought as to how or what you are going to do to replace them, well, expect higher grocery prices I guess

Most ag workers are here on... ag work visas. There are processes in place to facilitate this seasonal work.

"No more strawberries/lettuce/etc when you kick out all the illegals!" has been a rallying cry on lefty social media for the last few years and it... hasn't happened?

Turns out assuming all the brown farm workers are here illegally is not only extremely racist but fundamentally a misunderstanding of how the system works.

It's even more puzzling that people are cheering on the false premise of keeping people here in the shadow of the law as indentured servants so they can save 10 cents on tomatoes at the market.

[SR2Z]

It hasn't happened because no President has been stupid enough to deport them en-masse. Even the current guy has admitted that he won't focus on agriculture workers because it would be bad for business.

Nobody is hiring illegal workers to save 10¢. They are getting paid significantly less than minimum wage.

[Symbiote]

> It hasn't happened because no President has been stupid enough to deport them en-masse.

Britain enters the room...

Short-term farm labourers like fruit pickers weren't deported as such after Brexit (I think), and they were earning roughly double the minimum wage, but the jobs were seasonal so many workers spent the winter in their home countries.

After Brexit:

> A shortage of farm workers created by Brexit led to 8,000 tonnes of berries going unpicked last year.

The EU citizens have been replaced by labourers (with the appropriate visas etc) from Asia, but the wages have gone up and the costs of travel.

(I don't know how this affected fruit/vegetable prices. There were other causes of inflation at the same time.)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/14/why-uk-farms... (NB 2022.)

[FirmwareBurner]

>They are getting paid significantly less than minimum wage.

Which is bad for everyone except business owners who vacuum up all the profits from exploiting below minimum wage labor, and then socialize the cost of taxless under the table work of illegals to the state and by extension to the taxpayer.

[senordevnyc]

According to the USDA, around 40% are undocumented: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-d...

That seems like enough to have a measurable impact on food prices if they stop showing up?

To be clear, not arguing for or against enforcement, just pointing out that the data seems to suggest this as a factor to be taken into consideration.

[hamdingers]

> "No more strawberries/lettuce/etc when you kick out all the illegals!" has been a rallying cry on lefty social media for the last few years and it... hasn't happened?

Why would it have happened? "All the illegals" have not been kicked out, so what are you basing this statement on?

Bad faith framing.

[crooked-v]

It's already happening, and is part of the reason food prices are going up right now: https://www.newsweek.com/ice-immigration-raids-farms-crops-r...

[sugarpimpdorsey]

And yet I go to the market every week and the shelves are stocked so full they have to throw out or donate the produce that starts to go bad.

That article puts forth the tired trope that "crops are rotting in the fields". If that was true or so extensive as they portray, the shelves would be empty, not simply more expensive. They're not.

[mcphage]

> If that was true or so extensive as they portray, the shelves would be empty, not simply more expensive. They're not.

When chickens were being culled because of the bird flu, the supply of eggs dropped significantly. Prices of eggs also rose significantly. As a result, shelves were often full of eggs that were priced so high that they weren’t being bought as often. Production dropped, prices rose, demand dropped, surplus remained fairly constant.

[AlecSchueler]

> a rallying cry on lefty social media for the last few years

Have you noticed anything different between this year and the last few years?

[ivan_gammel]

If I understand the case with Hyundai correctly, the problem is not that people work without proper visas, but the interpretation of visa terms by ICE, which means that if they are to meet deportation KPIs, this may impact those who are working legally. The only racist angle to that will be if ICE is using racial profiling to pick the targets (for non-American it’s actually quite uncomfortable to see racism popping out of nowhere in many conversations, just like in your comment; we know that the unscientific and harmful concept of race is somehow important to Americans, but why are you always paying so much attention to it?). Why the only? Because ag workers in many countries are foreigners on ag visas, it is common, it is about cheap labor, labor code violations and sometimes human trafficking, and it has nothing to do with race, just with economic situation in workforce donor countries.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Anna Sorokin abused visa waivers to live and work in the US illegally for years. Somehow she still hasn't been deported despite being a felon and has even been frog marched to the airport where she was bizarrely allowed to refuse deportation. Nobody at ICE is apparently checking for that form of abuse.