06-14-2007, 11:17 AM
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Commentator
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: San Diego
Posts: 1,268
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Lindsey, California
Quote:
The packing houses here in the heart of California’s citrus belt are generally hopping the first week of February. In a normal year, the two LoBue Bros. plants would be open 50 to 60 hours a week, employing 230 workers and processing up to 7,000 bins of oranges. But after last month’s freeze, the third since 1990, LoBue is operating at quarter speed. One plant is shut down, and the other is running just 20 hours a week. About 60% of the employees are off work.
After the first of March, there will be a brief spurt of activity, when agricultural officials determine which remaining oranges are frost-free and good enough to go to market. But by mid-April, when the good fruit runs out, all activity, from picking to trucking, will stop, and there will be no more work until late October. If workers leave town -- and if those who stay are jobless -- the city’s economy will collapse.
Seeking to avert an economic meltdown, officials have come up with an innovative plan to not only address joblessness but to keep the workforce from abandoning the town. Invoking the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era Works Projects Administration, the city’s elected officials -- all of whom are Republicans -- are seeking federal aid to put the idle labor force to work on local improvement efforts.
The fact that a large-yet-undetermined percentage of farm laborers -- particularly pickers -- are illegal immigrants does not deter local officials from seeking aid for them. Unlike other parts of the U.S. where undocumented immigration is a divisive issue, in Lindsay it is a matter of economic survival.
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Personally, I want no illegals in our country no matter what. Even in cases like this, where the economy of a city depends on illegal labor. But in the off-season, to put them on the city payroll, thats ridiculous. Why isnt the INS all over this?
http://www.newamerica.net/publicatio...mmigrants_4821
news video report here
http://www.cnn.com/video/player/play...nts.wanted.cnn
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America is a melting pot, the people at the bottom get burned while all the scum floats to the top.
- - - Charlie King
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