Re: Illegals Update: Crops not rotting in fields, again

[quote="Bjorn"][We were just recently having the usual arguments in these ngs about
the need for Illegals so that we won't have produce "rotting in the
fields". Basically, a bunch of liberals using verbatum the articles
and talking points of wealthy industry SIGs. It's a shame that Liberal
Democrats desire so urgently to felate the wealthy Republican
supporters that run these Illegals-loving industry organisations. They
do seem to luv the taste of that jism, you can't generally educate or
shame them out of it. But I'll give it one more go here. A Joe
Guzzardi essay with the latest reporting on our rotting produce...]

For Labor Day, Good News From The Lodi, CA. Vineyards - Plenty of
Workers (and Machines) For This Year's Grape Harvest

By Joe Guzzardi

Journalism's cardinal rule is to write about what you know.

Follow that simple logic, and readers will value your opinions. Ignore
it, and you will soon be exposed as a fool.

Take, for example, two columnists who choose as their topic
California, its agriculture industry and whether additional guest
workers are required to pick this year's crop.

Tamar Jacoby, Washington, D.C.-based Manhattan Institute senior
writing fellow. Wherever on the Ea Jacoby may live, she is surrounded
by cement: high-rise federal buildings, malls and the Metro. The only
thing Jacoby knows about fruit is that her favorite ethnic grocery
store sells stone-hard peaches and mealy apples.

- VDARE.COM Letters Editor Joe Guzzardi, based in California's San
Joaquin County, the planet's agricultural capital. Within a three-mile
radius of Guzzardi's house are strawberry and corn fields, vineyards
and peach and cherry orchards.

Not to toot my own horn - but who, between Jacoby and me, is more
knowledgeable about California and farm labor?

Jacoby's latest Los Angeles Times column California Without A Mexican,
dissected by Brenda Walker in her blog here, is a great example of how
ill-advised she is to opine on subjects about which she knows nothing.

As noted, Jacoby doesn't live in California so her credibility is
immediately suspect. And the only Mexicans she knows are her fellow
traitors at La Raza. Jacoby is certainly not having cocktails with
field workers.

But this sentence from her LA Times column offers positive proof that
Jacoby is clueless:

"The crisis peaks every year in August and September, and the photos
start showing up in the newspapers: piles of rotting pears, strawberry
plants choked by weeds, unpicked cucumbers grown to monstrous sizes
and melons oozing in the fields."

Even though we are right now in the "crisis" period of "August and
September," I haven't seen any such photos. Living in the San Joaquin
Valley where agriculture is key to our economy, you can be sure I
would have if they exist.

But what's really fascinating is that the strawberry season ends in
May and pears haven't really started yet. Being asked to photograph
"rotting pears" or "strawberry plants choked by weeds" in early
September would be quite a challenge.

Jacoby needs a fact checker. Maybe she should call me.

Simply put, nothing is rotting save perhaps, a tomato in someone's
backyard vegetable patch.

Here, on the other hand, is what's going on.

In Lodi, the grape harvest has begun. The Lodi News-Sentinel published
a story about its first days. [ The Harvest Begins, By Chris Nichols,
Lodi News-Sentinel, August 24, 2007]

The story, with a slide show, details at length how between now and
November, the grapes will be picked. Featured are the vineyards' two
owners, Ben Kolber and Kris Gutierrez and a crew of Pakistani
immigrants (legally in the U.S., one assumes) who will man the two
tractors, the harvester and the gondola bins that collect the grapes.

The work is hard, to be sure. But people already in the U.S. do it-no
need for any guest worker programs. One of the pickers, Asif Khan, has
been in the U.S. for ten years and spoke in English to the
News-Sentinel reporter.

The comments posted on the story's Internet version (scroll all the
way down) are insightful, also.

Of most interest are these observations from "T & C":

"I'm from an old Dakota farm family and bucked many bales in my
younger days and always appreciated the mechanization of farm
machinery to do the back-breaking work.

"Great job, men. Hard work reaps great benefits, not like those
growers who use illegal (workers) and paid under the table help year
after year to prune, weed and harvest their grapes and other crops.
Some 'good' farmers even keep $2 an hour of their underpaid field
hands wages for themselves just for providing that job opportunity to
them to make their life 'better'. There's no reason to hand-pick wine
grapes anymore, except for the self profit of the greedy ones."

What do you think about that, Tamar Jacoby?

If Jacoby performed due diligence in her immigration pieces, a
practice that I suggest she institute, she would discover that we're
doing just fine in California, thank you very much, without any more
guest workers.

Even allowing that Jacoby was writing for the Los Angeles Times, her
column breaks all the rules for credible journalism.

Jacoby's language reflects speculation. Hard facts that many
publications, but not the Times, usually consider essential are found
nowhere.

Check it out for yourself.

According to Jacoby, writing about the "No Match" letters soon to be
sent by the Social Security Administration to employers reminding them
that names and social numbers of their workers must match:

- The government is demanding that unauthorized employees be fired and
threatening legal action if they aren't. This is expected to trigger
widespread layoffs""

- Better enforcement "will wreak havoc"

- If crackdowns on illegal immigration continue, "that could drive
fruit and vegetable farming out of the United States, putting
California's $30-billion-a-year industry at risk."

- "Agriculture would be just the beginning" of California industries
that would fail if immigration laws are enforced.

Jacoby concludes with this knee-slapper:

- [I]magine California 'without a Mexican' [Jacoby's reference to an
unfunny, box office bust, comedy that I reviewed here] a year or two
from now: crumbling roads, understaffed hospitals, unbuilt classrooms
and more."

Emphases added.

Earth to Tamar Jacoby! Earth to Tamar Jacoby! Come in please!

- California already has crumbling roads because the state spends so
much money on social services to aliens that it can't afford
infrastructure maintenance.

- Our hospitals are understaffed because personnel can't be hired
quickly enough to keep up with the illegal aliens seeking medical
treatment for anything from a runny nose to a kidney transplant.

- So many illegal alien children (and children born to their alien
mothers) have come to California that schools cannot be constructed
fast enough to accommodate them - even if there were money to build
them - which there is not.

In a column I wrote last year, I asked if dishonest journalists are
inherently dishonest.

I'm not sure if Jacoby is purposely deceitful in her immigration
columns or if she truly believes the pap she writes. If the latter,
then she is supremely naïve because a mountain of evidence exists that
destroys her position.

Jacoby should use this guideline: when she can substitute "have,"
"had," and "did" for "if," "would be," and "imagine," then I'll listen
to what she has to say.

Maybe

Until then, Jacoby should go back to journalism basics and try to
establish credibility among her limited audience.
[/quote]

http://www.halturnershow.com/ Hal Turner Show

greg