The paragraph after this one is a letter sent by this blogger on July 31 to the editor of The Wall Street Journal. For a more extensive discussion regarding immigrant labor in agriculture see the blog of June 22 entitled "AgJOBS bill of Senator Feinstein." In the WSJ article cited below it was mentioned that a 100 dairy farmers flew to Washington to make a case for Congressional help in obtaining more immigrant laborers, i.e. they cannot attract enough immigrants, legal and illegal, at the current wage. Moreover, some are uneasy about having many illegal immigrant laborers among their workers. The farmers would probably like to see 1) an expanded guest worker program (which would allow a specified number of foreign workers to be hired for a specified time period) for the dairy industry and 2) an amnesty for their illegal employees that would require the employees to stay in agriculture for a certain number of years as a condition for receiving amnesty (this is contained in Feinstein's proposed AgJOBS bill discussed in the June 22 blog). The article goes on to say that one dairy industry study finds that 40% of today's dairy labor force consists of immigrants, a big change from 20 years ago when there were few immigrants doing this work. What follows is the letter the editor of the WSJ:
When dairy farmers hire low-wage illegal immigrants or foreign guest workers as described in “Got Workers? Dairy Farms Run Low on Labor” (July 30, 2009), the effect is the same as that of a direct subsidy of the dairy farmers whose profits are thereby higher than if they were forced to pay market wages and benefits. It is an insidious subsidy because its cost is not explicit in the federal budget. Rather its cost is spread across the country in terms of various free or low-cost public services that the low-income immigrant workers receive, including free education for their children and free health care through hospital emergency rooms. Because their incomes are low, these workers pay little in taxes and they reduce the availability of, and money for, various public services for our poor citizens. Furthermore, at some level of wages and benefits dairy farmers would be able to attract capable American citizens to do such work. This is proven by the large number of Americans who currently do such “dirty” jobs as coal mining and garbage collection in return for decent wages and benefits. In general, agriculture is a “sacred cow” whose government subsidies have yet to be reined in by Congress.
