‘We Voted for Trump to Fix the Border. Now We’re Milking Cows Alone at 4 A.M.’ – Vermont Farmers Face Harsh Reality as ICE Raids Hit Home
thesarkariform.com
When Donald Trump supporters in rural Vermont cast their ballots, many say they never imagined immigration…

Do these people not understand what illegal immigrant meant? It means not a US citizen, not documented here, no VISA.

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    35·
    1 day ago

    Can we point out the obvious? Farmers rely on exploiting desperate migrant workers in violation of labor laws. Milk should cost more than it does, because it is perishable and labor intensive to produce.

    It is not a good thing that ICE is sending people to death camps, nor is it ok that we are abandoning the rule of law to do it. But those are the victims. The farmers who have lower profits because they can no longer access illegally cheap labor are the real criminals.

    • SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nzEnglish
      15·
      1 day ago

      They’ve been deporting those who are there legally too.

      With an insufficient workforce, pay rates going up isn’t necessarily enough to get you workers. Moving regions to get a new job isn’t usually cheap or fast.

      I don’t know if the previous pay rates were illegally low (the US’s definition of illegally low is itself low), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they couldn’t & wouldn’t pay ~$20-30/h if there were workers available.

      Going from a labour-cheap world to a labour-expensive world also implies that people want to increase mechanisation and automation, and that’s not cheap or fast either.