TV’s Colbert & Farmworkers Union Miss 2 Key Facts In Their Illegal Alien Stunt

By Roy Beck, posted on NumbersUSA

4% and H-2A!

These are two powerful reasons why TV comedian Stephen Colbert and the United Farm Workers of America are completely misleading the public with their “Take Our Jobs” stunt.

They claim that they are bringing a dose of reality to the national desire to move illegal aliens out of the country. They suggest that because few Americans have stepped forward to take field work at existing wages and conditions, that means we need most of the illegal aliens who are in the country.

In a nutshell, here are the two main reasons their gag is full of a baloney:

Only 4% of illegal alien workers have jobs in agriculture
To whatever extent a farmer may rely on illegal ag workers, he/she has an unlimited supply of LEGAL ag workers available through a foreign visa program called H-2A.
UNION ABANDONS WORKERS TO MAKE AMNESTY POINT

The Union’s founder, Caesar Chavez was a champion against illegal immigraiton because he knew how it depressed wages, benefits and working conditions for those who work the fields.

But now the union is much more concerned with adding millions of illegal foreign workers into the rolls of registered voters to accomplish other political goals.

Union officials said the campaign called “Take Our Jobs” is intended to highlight the role of illegal workers in feeding Americans and to goad Congress to overhaul U.S. immigration policy. . . I can’t imagine we’ll find that many Americans want to work in the fields,” said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the California-based union.

Kicking out illegal aliens would lead to crops rotting in the fields, higher food prices and a greater reliance on imports, the Associated Press says the union contends.

“If we asked all the undocumented immigrants to leave the country, the agriculture industry would die,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

Can you believe such bald-faced lying!

I hope you will challenge every reporter who ever quotes such nonsense without a response that shows what a lie it is.

The H-2A visa program allows any farmer in America to import an unlimited number of foreign workers to labor in the fields.

If the government made illegal aliens go home, there would be no reason for a single head of lettuce to rot in the fields or an apple to fall and rot on the ground.

Then why are there so many illegal aliens working the fields?

Because the farmers who hire them refuse to pay the slightly higher wages required when they use the LEGAL H-2A system and because they don’t plan ahead enough to use the system. North Carolina farmers, on the other hand, have banded together in a kind of co-op to easily use the H-2A system and beat some red tape issues.

ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE MAINLY THREAT TO NON-AG JOBS

Advocates for illegal foreign workers almost always focus on agriculture because they know — as does Stephen Colbert — that few native-born Americans are interested in working the fields at current low wages, tough working conditions and low benefits.

But hardly any illegal aliens are in the ag occupations.

The Pew Hispanic Center in April of 2009 issued a report that found:

4% of undocumented workers are in “Farming, Fishing, and Forestry.”

That is according to Pew’s Table 6, “Comparing Industries of U.S.-born and unauthorized immigrant workers, 2008”

The overwhelming majority of illegal aliens (and even higher percentage of legal foreign workers) have jobs in construction, manufacturing, service and transportation. These are jobs that a high percentage of the 25 million Americans unable to find a full-time job WOULD take.

Attrition Through Enforcement efforts that have helped cause a reduction of approximately 2 million in the illegal alien population over the last two years are designed to open up jobs that Americans DO want and to reduce burdens on taxpayers and local communities.

Using ag work as an excuse for amnesty not only is illogical, it is intentionally deceptive.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA

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