redoak - 3/13/2016 12:14
1234 - 3/13/2016 12:24 We got a situation here where one of the mega-dairies has 24-25 illegals (?) living in a one family house, mattresses on the floor in the basement. The local government won't touch them because the mega-dairies run the county politics. I had one local who works for a mega-dairy tell me: "I don't bother learning their names because every so often they go to NYC and come back with new papers and a different name. " You can say that they aren't slaves because they can leave anytime they want but can they, where can they go? They'll get picked up if they leave the farm. Forty years ago there were hundreds of single family farms raising children, sending them to school, making good future citizens. I remember distinctly when the big shift happened. The "California Model" was all the talk in the farm magazines. In the mid-nineties I knew some young locals milking cows for some of these farms complaining that they could't earn enough to buy rent, food & gas. Soon enough the Mexicans showed up but now it's mostly Guatamalans because they're even more tractable than the Mexicans. I gotta give the mega-dairy managment credit for one thing, at least they cut the cost of rent for their employees. They provide the housing, such as it is.
1234 we have same thing here with the greenhouse vegetable operations ,at least 3,000 foriegn workers on temporary work permits
(8 months
) , housed in bunk houses on farms ,sure they get paid but would you want your spouse,son ,daughter away in foriegn country for 8 months making minimun wage .......over all they are good workers/people caught in a bad situation were they sacrifice so we can have reasonable priced tomato's,cukes,peppers and now some strawberries fresh year round and owners can live at the Lake and drive Mercedes....some of the larger operations
($100 mil.+
) run greenhouses here ,Mi.,Oh.,Ca.,NM , Mexico,Spain....
The money thing, my morning ramble.
