Strange Bedfellows: NYT Supporting Agribusiness to Help Illegals

  • Bookmark and Share

The New York Times' reliably pro-illegal immigrant reporter Julia Preston, fresh from using a survey compiled by a (unlabeled) Hillary presidential pollster to make a pro-illegal immigrant argument, returned to the beat Saturday with "Farmers Call Crackdown On Illegal Workers Unfair," which located another odd angle to defend amnesty for illegals -- it will hurt agribusiness.

"Facing the prospect of major layoffs of farmworkers during harvest season, growers and lawmakers from agricultural states spoke in dire terms yesterday about new measures by the Bush administration to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants.

"'This is not just painful, this is death to the American farmer,' Maureen Torrey, who runs a family dairy and vegetable farm in Elba, N. Y., said in a telephone interview.

"'We've tried everything we can do,' Ms. Torrey said. 'But they are leaving us with no options.'

"At a news conference in Washington yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Carlos M. Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce, formally unveiled the measures, which had been disclosed in general terms earlier, to reinforce border security and drive illegal immigrants out of the labor force.

"The new effort was cautiously welcomed yesterday by conservative Republicans who defied President Bush in June and opposed a broad immigration bill he supported that failed in the Senate. That bill included provisions to give legal status to illegal immigrants and to create a guest worker program for agriculture.

"Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who turned against that bill, said the measures were 'a long-overdue step to regaining the trust of the American people that the federal government is serious about securing our borders and enforcing our laws.'"

Preston quoted four sources against the bill (one of them, Maureen Torrey, was quoted twice), compared to one for those in favor. Times Watch isn't classifying Chertoff himself in either category, based on what Slate journalist Mickey Kaus aptly termed the "bitter you-asked-for-it-now-you're-going-to-get-it quotes from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff." (The exact quotes Kaus referred to appeared in the L.A. Times, but Preston heard something similar.)

Halfway in, Preston again quoted dire warnings from Torrey, the New York state farmer:

"Ms. Torrey, the New York farmer, and other growers expressed their distress to White House and Homeland Security Department officials during a conference call with the National Council of Agricultural Employers, arranged by the administration to explain the new plan. Ms. Torrey warned that dairy cows would die from lack of milking if New York farmers had to fire immigrant dairy workers."

Preston never bothered to mention that Torrey is an activist on the issue, part of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, and testified before Congress in May on behalf of reforming the alien agricultural guest-worker program and to allow illegal workres to earn the right to become permanent legal residents. Incidentally, the "family dairy and vegetable farm" Maureen Torrey runs is called Torrey Farms -- and comprises 10,000 acres.

—Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times.


Comments Policy

All comments are owned by whoever posted them and are subject to our terms of use. They should not be assumed to represent the views of NewsBusters.

Viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Do it the Right Way

All of these farmers can hire people to work on their farms the right and legal way.  I will pay the prices I need to pay to pay for the legal labor.  The prices will adjust and the pay scales will adjust and my pay adjust will also.  This is the free market.

I don't feel sorry for any of these people.  Maybe the fruit and vegetable farmers still using manual labor will mechanize.  Soybean and corn farmers mechanized when labor became too expensive for them.

Mr. Chertoff:  Build the wall and punish the employers who hire the illegals.  We are not backing down.  Your threats and scare tactics do not bother me!

“You don’t understand. I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen.”  Representative Sheila Jackson Lee D-TX

Mechanize . . . .

River City:  I don't feel sorry for any of these people.  Maybe the fruit and vegetable farmers still using manual labor will mechanize.  Soybean and corn farmers mechanized when labor became too expensive for them.

Great point, R C!  Historically, that's EXACTLY what has happened in those industries that swore they coudln't survive without cheap labor.  Forced to innovate, they mechanized processes and now yield several times the produce per acreage as before. 

The country was on this

The country was on this road before the civil war broke out. These businesses will innovate or others will come along and replace them.

As the old canard went, "Save the buggy whip industry!!"

Nothing new here

This is not a new phenomenon, as Peter Brimelow explained in his 1995 book Alien Nation.  The special interests of the Left --- self-described human rights groups, immigrant groups, et al --- are the strange bedfellows of the Right --- agribusiness, government bureaucrats, manufacturers, et al --- in their joint anti-nationalist proclivity for open borders and weak immigration enforcement.

Their goal is to deconstruct the American nation and reform it as a polyglot of ethnic groups totally reliant on the Federal government for cohesion.  Essentially, they want Yugoslavia, where government was stern and took extreme measures to hold onto power. 

By the way, if you go to Brimelow's VDARE website, you can download a PDF version of Alien Nation absolutely free.

This is exactly what is needed!

If agri-business cannot function without the black-market illegal labor, then America needs to know this! The real issue is that the farmers and mega-corps that own the farms will lose some of their profit if they have to pay actual legal workers minimum wage and SS witholding, fed taxes, state taxes, etc. The real issue is that they want to pay their laborers the $3 an hour in cash, under the table and be done with it.

Perhaps a stop-gap measure can be to require welfare recipients to work on a local farm for their benefits until a guest agri-worker program is adjusted to meet the apparent need?

A real journalist would have asked Ms. Torrey what rate she pays her farm hands and if they are employees or independant contractors for tax purposes. Then again, we know that the NYT is not interested in real journalism, just advocating for the Sulzberger's point of view.

 

The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic

    Farming is very

    Farming is very adaptable but it is also very competitive and survives on thin margins.  Farmers can and will change but it can't be done overnight.  The national government must choose an immigration policy and then stick with it.   Farmers can only invest in machinery or higher labor if all farmers are playing by the same rules.

  Essentially what the pro-illegal lobby is saying is that for this country to prosper we need a sub-citizen class that lives below poverty wages with no political voice to clean our houses, mow our lawns and pick our vegetables.   It's our modern version of 'untouchables'.

The Untouchables

 MidAmerica:  "Essentially what the pro-illegal lobby is saying is that for this country to prosper we need a sub-citizen class that lives below poverty wages with no political voice to clean our houses, mow our lawns and pick our vegetables.   It's our modern version of 'untouchables'. "

 You're spot on, MidA.  That's exactly what they are saying.  Even the likes of Geraldo Rivera, who paints himself as the champion of the working man and defender of Hispanics everywhere, offers us an alternative:  cheap illegal labor, or $18 asparagus.  He's perfectly comfortable with farm workers earning less than minimum wage as long as we allow them to come her e illegally.

And even a socialist economist like Paul Krugman readily concedes that this underpaid underclass is what's been holding the minimum wage down. 

 

Remove the minimum wage,

Remove the minimum wage, remove child labor laws and enforce anti-slavery laws, I mean illegal immigration, and the market will work itself out.

Capitalism in agriculture

The government also needs to abandon its policy of trying to guarantee that anyone who wants to farm will be successful at it.  That's one of the major reasons why we have an ethanol industry.  I've known a lot of farmers, and they're wonderful.  Still, with the technology available today, I'm not sure we need as many as we have.  "Corporate farming" is a dirty word here in the heartland, but larger farms could probably produce all we need with no subsidies or government handouts of any kind.  To sum up what I'm saying, let the free market work in agriculture.

That being said, I doubt the political will exists.

When you put the clowns in charge, don't be surprised when a circus breaks out.

 I'm not sure we need as

 I'm not sure we need as many as we have

 Seems to me this very thing is killing competition in many other markets in this country? Not sure if their are ever enough.

"'This is not just painful,

"'This is not just painful, this is death to the American farmer,'
Maureen Torrey, who runs a family dairy and vegetable farm in Elba, N.
Y., said in a telephone interview."

Sound similar to what they were saying when slavery was ended. "Without slaves, who will we get to pick the cotton?"

For some reason, I don't see very many unpicked fields of cotton these days.

Ms. Torrey the NY farmer

Call her a bigot or a racist for wanting to keep these people in a perpetual underclass and watch her squirm.

“You don’t understand. I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen.”  Representative Sheila Jackson Lee D-TX

 What will really kill the

 What will really kill the businessman more than anything is making them hire unemployed American citizens at higher wages with benefits. They may have to ditch a mansion, or a Benz or two.

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious. "

                   - Ben Kenobi on  Liberals, and the MSM.

"'This is not just painful,

"'This is not just painful, this is death to the American farmer,' Maureen Torrey, who runs a family dairy and vegetable farm in Elba, N. Y., said in a telephone interview.

"'We've tried everything we can do,' Ms. Torrey said. 'But they are leaving us with no options.'

She had at least 24 illegal people employeed on her farm, that she knows of. In NYS, to be hired, there is a form that needs to be filled out, checked out with SS, and you can NOT start work UNTIL the numbers pass SS. So Ms Torrey (Marshal), how come you got around THIS proceedure?

 Ms Torrey forgets to mention this is a "mega" farm and her name is Torrey Marshal. She is also Vice-President of Federal Reserve Bank of New York! Her political contributions are in the Thousands to Mr Reynolds, I assume to buy his vote.

Your two farms and your "political" contacts do NOT put you above the law. Maybe a visit to the local jail would teach you a lesson, followed by a VERY LARGE fine.

Absolutely zip in the way

Absolutely zip in the way of sympathy here for these folks who have broken the law that they think there is no other way to do business at a profit. Mechanize and raise wages to the point where a labor shortage is not costing more than the additional wages. It's what everybody else has to do.

Someone said the key to this is making sure everyone is on the same playing field. I could not agree more. We can not let anyone get away with hiring illegal labor, lest we give them a competitive advantage over their honest competitors. If the law is enforced across the board, food prices may rise slightly in the short run, but most Americans are willing to pay the price for the security and well being of the country. And those farms which produce efficiently in the new arena will thrive. Those which spend their money on rent seeking behavior, i.e. begging for special favors like hiring illegal labor, will not.

The Feces Hit the Spinach

I broke this story last year in a series of articles I sent out in what really is going on in industry with illegals.

It is not about paying cheaper wages really, but the way these corporate farms and contractors are "double dipping" on the books paying out "high wages" on the books, but lesser amounts to illegals which do and do not exist. By this I mean, these robber barons know very well 40 people can not have the same Social Security number of John Brown Garcia.......there are hundreds of these fake numbers around which they enter into the books as wages and pocket the money.

The big money getter though is wages are tax deductions. The fake workers provide not just kiting checks but tax deductions. One corporation can literally steal millions a year by this double system. That is why these criminal corporations want illegals here.....if they had to employ Americans only their money skimming operations would not have any money.

I wanted to alert people the second part of this too as it is what was killing Americans last year and not "wild pigs" as the Californians knew very well it wasn't in the multi billion dollar spinach industry.

I know Mexicans and how things work in the fields. OSHA can put all the crappers they want at the end of a field, but Mexicans get paid by box not by the hour.....so instead of going to a toilet they go in the fields and use the spinach and lettuce to wipe.

There corporations are not going to loose one leaf of spinach in their billion dollar industry and simply put the produce into a bath and wash it off.....problem was the chemical bath was so contaminated people got sick and died.

This brings in part 2 of how the chemical bath meant to wash the produce got so overloaded......the fact is human waste though on a concentrated scale.

These corporations operate huge farms into Mexico to the United States. They require huge amounts of fertlizer. In the United States it is against the law to use human sewage as fertlizer as people will get sick from it and die. So..........

The corporate farms put on their books they are getting fertilizer at such a price from say Sonora Chemical Fertilizer Ltd. Sonora though found out long ago it could sell free human feces at a nice price as Mexico allows that on all it's produce. Once again in the kickbacks plan, say in round numbers a corporation in America "buys" oil based chemical fertilizer at 100 dollars a ton on the books. Off the books, they pay Sonora 20 dollars a ton and Sonora kicks back the 80 but spreads the human poop all over the spinach fields.

With the infamous Montezuma's Revenge rampant in Mexico, the human feces fertilizer spread on spinach fields finds a wonderful warm, wet field to grow in.....it grows so well with the spinach that it overloads the washing system on the farms and people end up dead eating spinach.

I will not buy that crap literally and either grow my own or will buy from a local farmer who grows it themselves. ALL fruit I wash and I wash my hands before eating again even with bananas. Until you have been on the docks in latin America and seen what goes on or seen a Mexican standing beside you drop their pants, bend over at the waist and .....well vacate in a liquid stream, pull up their pants without wiping and go right back to work, you have no idea what corporate agriculture is pulling.

Oh and to be fair........I wouldn't purchase a new home or put much stock in all the industrial plants going up in mass. The Mexicans doing the work either cover up the shoddy mistakes or some white guy nails over it.

If that Minnesota bridge was built 3 years ago and fell, I would know it was illegals....right now I would guess it was mafia low grade steel on kickbacks as that is the way the world spins.

That was human feces on that spinach and that will be new houses burning down because illegals nailed the two by fours which are supposed to be two by sixes into the electrical wiring.

One can only hope it is the Times family who burns up and Ms. Torrey who dies of food poisoning, instead of innocent kids like last time. Sounds brutal, but they caused this and I have had it with Americans dying for murderous profits.

 

 

*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS

Illegals in the Spinach Fields

LC:

I remember the feces in the spinach fields being the cause of the deaths.  I also remember that once the MSM discovered it was the organic spinach and the cause they couldn't shut the story down fast enough.  Those poor dead people didn't count for anything any more. 

Standing ovation.  Thanks.

“You don’t understand. I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen.”  Representative Sheila Jackson Lee D-TX