Tree Planters Feeling Pinch of Cuts
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Some tree-planting contractors in Arkansas are going out of business because of a shortage of H-2 B guest-worker visas.
“It put me out of business,” said Chuck Hoover, a Monticello-based forestry contractor who began hiring H-2 B workers in 1999.
{snip}
Those wanting their land planted with seedlings will be served, if a bit late this year, said Allan Murray, who manages the Arkansas Forestry Commission’s Baucum Nursery just east of Little Rock. That’s because some land owners were hesitant to commit to seedlings due to the uncertainty of the Farm Bill and its reforestation incentives, and high grain prices make farming more attractive than trees, he said.
Hoover wanted to employ 40 H-2 B planters from Mexico but received none. The inability to plant seedlings jeopardizes the demand for Hoover’s other work, which involves spraying, burning and ripping land to prepare it for planting.
{snip}
Finding U. S. workers to plant seedlings has become increasingly difficult during the past 45 years, said Bryan Davis, a forester with Little Rock-based Davis DuBose Forestry Real Estate Consultants.
{snip}
The problems with hiring foreign workers are rooted in federal legislation.
Section H-2 B of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 permits nonimmigrant foreigners to enter the United States each year to perform temporary services on a seasonal basis. Forestry, construction, hospitality, fisheries, landscaping and golf course maintenance are just a few of the sectors that use H-2 B workers.
{snip}
Demand for H-2 B workers continues to be strong, said Ian Thomas Hardin, an attorney with Immigration Law Associates of Cape Girardeau, Mo.
The 33, 000 cap for the first half of fiscal year 2008 was met Oct. 1 and, “by the first week of January, the April ones were already gone,” Hardin said.
In Arkansas, requests for more than 8, 000 H-2 B workers were filed in 2006 and nearly 7, 000 in 2007, representing more than 10 percent of the national quota.
The Forest Landowners Association, which represents private, nonindustrial landowners, has petitioned the U. S. Department of Labor to permit tree planters to enter the country under H-2 A visas. A companion of the H-2 B program, H-2 A, which is designed for agricultural laborers, has no annual visa cap.
{snip}
(Posted on March 6, 2008)
Comments
Why can’t our government understand that not only have illegals lowered the payrate of certain jobs, but we white Americans don’t want to work around them? Oh, yeah. Our representatives will never have to face one up close.
Posted by at 12:14 AM on March 7
This sounds completely insane. This is just landscaping work, correct? That’s all it is. My brother did that in my Sierra Nevada town 10 years ago. The workforce was all White. The job was lousy, but there was no problem finding employees. Now, many landscapers around that town are starting to hire illegals, and those who hire only Americans are being run out of business. So I guess it is turning into a job Americans won’t do.
The local Forest Service spends a great deal of time planting trees in the National Forest nearby. Certainly they cannot hire illegals. I don’t know who does this work, but they must be citizens of some sort. What is this garbage about Americans won’t plant trees? Is there something horrible about the work somehow? Does it damage your body in some way? I don’t get it.
Where do these idiots get off getting H-1B job thieves to plant trees (landscaping work) anyway? Who says Americans won’t do this?
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 1:46 AM on March 7
I’m always happy to see a businessman who refuses to hire American citizens go out of business.
Posted by WR the elder at 3:52 AM on March 7
The unfortunate thing is our young men absolutely refuse to do such work. Too bad, honest work is a good thing and very satisfying.
I’m really sad about our young men as they are.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron at 6:52 AM on March 7
Maybe Americans would do these kinds of jobs if it paid a little bit more of a living wage.
Posted by Oly at 8:22 AM on March 7
This is the kind of work I used to do when I was in high school. No wonder unemployment is so high among our youth.
Posted by tacitus at 11:35 AM on March 7
The article does not mention what the hourly wage is that is being offered.
Aside from the propaganda, here’s a pretty good rule of thumb for employers seeking workers: Americans will work for American wages. Third world peasants will work for anything less.
Another rule: Good work is not cheap and cheap work is not good. Unless of course you can get good work, pay peanuts and let the American taxpayer pickup the balance of the tab in healthcare, schools, welfare, law enforcement, etc.
Posted by Lucas M at 12:55 PM on March 7
“Why can’t our government understand that not only have illegals lowered the payrate of certain jobs, but we white Americans don’t want to work around them?”
I’ve had some good experiences working with non-whites, however, for the most part there’s an anti-white and/or an anti-western/anti US bias of some kind, and for the most part I wouldn’t be subject to this ‘racism’ if I didn’t have to be around non-whites. It’s not something I expect to see change, in this lifetime anyway. The media can’t trick me into being ‘tolerant’ of being hated, neither can they convince me to join in on trying to finding a dwindling number of fellow whites to hate. Even if I was dreaming that everything would be just fine for me and I was sure I’d be rising to the top, I’d still want most of them to leave.
Posted by LHathaway at 1:57 PM on March 7
The tree planting companies will not go out of business. The National Park Service will have to pay more to get trees planted, as contractors will have no more cheap Mexican labor to do the job and landowners will still want trees.
Posted by bob at 1:57 PM on March 7
Americans will do a job if it is advertised as being in existence. You can’t accept a job that you’ve been deliberately kept from knowing about. The jobs that every government/corporate wank-tard claims “Americans won’t do” are all handled strictly word-of-mouth, straight from the employer to the “guest workers” (as in large-scale farming operations, chicken processors, etc.), or, as in employers like restaurants, the hiring officials/mgmt are non-White and will only hire Whites if they are in a huge jam and simply can find no other alternative. That way they don’t have to worry about the pressure groups suing them and forcing them to apologize for their supposedly “racist” hiring practices. It has nothing to do with non-Whites being cheap labor, because as anyone who has worked with non-Whites (or employed them) is well aware of, they are in fact very expensive to hire and maintain as employees. They quit without warning in mid-shift, spend more time on their endless eating and socializing then they ever spend working, and what little work they do usually takes forever and is riddled with errors that must be corrected or, depending on the job involved, the batch discarded and done over. Bad/non-existent work is EXPENSIVE work. Also, the immigrunts tend to be hired at a higher pay rate than their American, usually White counterparts. Good example of how things tend to work nowadays: last job I was able to get, the Whites were all hired at the lowest allowable rate, all the non-Whites were started at a dollar an hour higher, even though they had little to no experience and most of them could not speak a word of English, and at lunch, the Whites were always charged for their food at the 50% employee discount, but the non-White employees all, without exception, ate both during their break and all throughout the workday (even though this was prohibited behaviour) at NO CHARGE, ever. No big surprise, though, as the hiring manager was, lo and behold, from Sierra Leone, one of the most hideously out-of-control countries in western sub-Saharan Africa…
Posted by at 5:10 PM on March 7
“The unfortunate thing is our young men absolutely refuse to do such work.”
Would this refusal continue if they were hungry?
Posted by govnn.com at 1:34 AM on March 8
These contractors have gotten away w/this for years, only now is it even being mentioned, the contractors should be prosecuted, the welfare roles are full of able bodied people, yet we allow illegals to come here for this kind of work, and the taxpayers continue supporting those on the welfare roles, makes sense to me.
Posted by abc at 5:53 AM on March 8
Cheap labor comes at a high price. Welfare,food stamps, medicare and busted out ER’S Americans will do the work if they are paid a living wage.
Posted by Burr Hamilton at 5:00 PM on March 10
What do you think you are talking about!! I am trying to find a job right NOW, and have been specifically looking for an outdoor or construction job… the only jobs available are service industry standing behind a counter with a plastic name tag on your polyester shirt.
That wasnt the case for the “greatest generation“ folks, who enjoyed actual industry and mechanical jobs available, where the employer invested training in you in excahnge for years of service. We NOW have a greedly bush globalist economy, that wants DISPOSABLE short term labor. SHAME ON YOU for your lack of concern for todays generation that doesnt benefit from the opportunities that once existed here for our fathers.
“The unfortunate thing is our young men absolutely refuse to do such work. Too bad, honest work is a good thing and very satisfying.
I’m really sad about our young men as they are.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron at 6:52 AM on March 7“
Posted by at 9:10 PM on March 11