Alarm spread through California agricultural centers Tuesday as panicked workers reported that federal immigration authorities were showing up at farm fields and packinghouses from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley.
I believe the solution to a lot of problems in America is enhancing social mobility. If immigrants want to work in United States fields, and the farm owners can’t pay a living wage, then the only fair tradeoff is some other form of compensation.
Work for a set period of years, and once that is complete, programs are made easily available so those people can pursue education, entrepreneurship, and a path towards permanent residency or citizenship. After the initial working period, they would also be entitled to minimum wage, which would encourage a transition into a higher paying job of some kind, even if it is just a leadership role on the farm.
If a company is caught hiring illegal immigrants to skirt these rules, the company should be punished harshly and publicly shamed as if they were trying to hire slaves—that is essentially what they are doing in that case, diet slavery.
I believe this would provide a path that would be available to any able bodied immigrant who wants to work to start their journey in the United States while also setting them up for a future where they would not be disabled by poverty and exploitation. It would also meet the demands of manual labor in America, and open the door for increased profits by businesses who chose to hire immigrants.
Of course, the social mobility aspect should apply to citizens too. US citizens should get advanced education for free so that they can prosper in their own country and not feel like a job has been stolen from them by an immigrant taking up some of the hardest manual labor roles in the country. There is no reason that any American should be undereducated to the point of needing to pick fruit in the California sun.
I believe the solution to a lot of problems in America is enhancing social mobility. If immigrants want to work in United States fields, and the farm owners can’t pay a living wage, then the only fair tradeoff is some other form of compensation.
Work for a set period of years, and once that is complete, programs are made easily available so those people can pursue education, entrepreneurship, and a path towards permanent residency or citizenship. After the initial working period, they would also be entitled to minimum wage, which would encourage a transition into a higher paying job of some kind, even if it is just a leadership role on the farm.
If a company is caught hiring illegal immigrants to skirt these rules, the company should be punished harshly and publicly shamed as if they were trying to hire slaves—that is essentially what they are doing in that case, diet slavery.
I believe this would provide a path that would be available to any able bodied immigrant who wants to work to start their journey in the United States while also setting them up for a future where they would not be disabled by poverty and exploitation. It would also meet the demands of manual labor in America, and open the door for increased profits by businesses who chose to hire immigrants.
Of course, the social mobility aspect should apply to citizens too. US citizens should get advanced education for free so that they can prosper in their own country and not feel like a job has been stolen from them by an immigrant taking up some of the hardest manual labor roles in the country. There is no reason that any American should be undereducated to the point of needing to pick fruit in the California sun.