NYT on Amnesty: Cheap Labor Profiteering Millionaires Need Your Help!

Last Sunday, The New York Times published a front-page article about the heartfelt need of California farmers for more illegal aliens. [California Farmers Short of Labor, and Patience, Jennifer Medina, March 29, 2014]

The first tip-off that heinous public policy ideas were coming was that the Times introduced farmer Chuck Herrin, owner of a farm-labor contracting company, as a “lifelong Republican.” That’s Times-speak for “liberal.”

Herrin admitted that he employs a lot of illegal aliens and bitterly complained that they lived in fear of “Border Patrol and deportations.” (But, apparently, he doesn’t live in fear of admitting he’s violating our immigration laws.)

Sorry that running a country inconveniences you, Chuck.

He said his illegal alien employees deserved amnesty because if “we keep them here and not do anything for them once they get old, that’s really extortion.”

As the punch line goes, “What’s this ‘we,’ paleface?”

Taxpayers have been subsidizing Chuck Herrin’s underpayment of his illegal labor force for decades, with skyrocketing taxes to pay for schools, roads, bridges, food stamps, health care and so on. Now Herrin thinks “we” are supposed to support his illegal employees in their old age, too.

Here’s another idea: How about a federal law mandating that employers of illegal aliens take responsibility for the people they hire? Why is the taxpayer on the hook for illegal aliens’ food, housing and medical care, when Chuck Herrin got 100 percent of the profit from their cheap labor?

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“We” got hospital emergency rooms jammed with illegal aliens when we came in with heart attacks. “We” got the crime, drunk-driving and drug trafficking associated with illegal aliens. “We” got the overcrowded schools filled with kids whose illegal alien parents don’t pay property taxes. “We” got to press “one” for English.

This is even worse than the Wall Street bailouts — another example of fat cats pocketing 100 percent of the profits when business is good, but demanding a taxpayer handout when their investments go south. At least the Wall Street bailouts didn’t alter the country forever by giving the Democrats 30 million new voters.

According to the California Hospital Association, health care for illegal aliens is costing state taxpayers well over $1 billion a year. Eighty-four hospitals across California have already been forced to close because of unpaid bills by illegal aliens.

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Not only should employers of illegal aliens be responsible for their employees’ becoming public charges, but they ought to be legally responsible for any crimes their illegal workers commit, just as parents can be for the crimes of their minor children, and bars can be for the behavior of their over-served customers.

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If Mexican farm labor is so much cheaper, maybe we should be growing our fruits and vegetables in Mexico. There’s absolutely no reason to import Mexicans to do something they could do at home and then sell to us. I believe this is what economists call “competitive advantage.”

The Times quotes a report by two pro-amnesty farmers groups, Partnership for a New American Economy and the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, complaining that American consumption of foreign-grown produce has increased by 80 percent since the late 1990s.

I see why rich farmers are alarmed by that, but why should Americans care? If food can be grown cheaper in other countries, isn’t it the very essence of libertarian free trade principles to buy it from them?

No. Apparently, we’re required to wreck the country by bringing in millions upon millions more poor people so we can save the buggy whip industry.

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