“They Like the Mexicans Because They Are Scared and Will Do Anything They Tell Them To”

Border Patrol Agents Monitor US-Mexico Border

That quote could just as easily refer to the Democratic Party. A big part of the pitch for illegal aliens has been that American workers just won’t do the work. And that if you deport the illegals, the crops will rot in the fields because there will be no one to pick them.

Except American workers will do it. They just won’t be hired to do it. That’s true in the tech industry where the likes of Facebook scammer-in-chief Mark Zuckerberg is running fake conservative ads for Lindsay Graham and it’s true in the fields where migrant workers take the place of African-American workers.

As Congress weighs immigration legislation expected to expand the guest worker program, another group is increasingly crying foul — Americans, mostly black, who live near the farms and say they want the field work but cannot get it because it is going to Mexicans. They contend that they are illegally discouraged from applying for work and treated shabbily by farmers who prefer the foreigners for their malleability.

“They like the Mexicans because they are scared and will do anything they tell them to,” said Sherry Tomason, who worked for seven years in the fields here, then quit. Last month she and other local residents filed a federal lawsuit against a large grower of onions, Stanley Farms, alleging that it mistreated them and paid them less than it paid the Mexicans.

Some of the details from that lawsuit include charges that American workers were paid less than Mexicans.

The plaintiffs say Stanley Farms paid them less than minimum wage over the last three years and illegally cut their wages. The plaintiffs said they also worked alongside pickers who had work permits and who were paid more money than what American workers received

“We see this repeatedly,” said plaintiff’s attorney Dawson Morton. “Farms complain that no local workers are available. But when they do hire local workers, they don’t pay them fairly and don’t offer them the same pay as their foreign workers. It’s illegal and discourages American workers from continuing in agriculture.”

There is a pattern of these lawsuits going around.

The suit is one of a number of legal actions containing similar complaints against farms, including a large one in Moultrie, Ga., where Americans said they had been fired because of their race and national origin, given less desirable jobs and provided with fewer work opportunities than Mexican guest workers.

Even many of the Americans who feel mistreated acknowledge that the Mexicans who arrive on buses for a limited period are incredibly efficient, often working into the night seven days a week to increase their pay.

“We are not going to run all the time,” said Henry Rhymes, who was fired — unfairly, he says — from Southern Valley after a week on the job. “We are not Mexicans.”

Jon Schwalls, director of operations at Southern Valley, made a similar point.

“When Jose gets on the bus to come here from Mexico he is committed to the work,” he said. “It’s like going into the military. He leaves his family at home. The work is hard, but he’s ready. A domestic wants to know: What’s the pay? What are the conditions? In these communities, I am sorry to say, there are no fathers at home, no role models for hard work. They want rewards without input.”

Hard work is one thing, but American employees have a legitimate right to ask what he’s going to be paid and what the conditions of employment are. If you expect to hire employees who don’t care what the pay is, then your business model is destructive. If businesses want people who are willing to work for anything without regard for their families, then that’s a little too close to bringing back slavery.

“I am not arguing that agricultural work is a good job,” said Dawson Morton, a lawyer who focuses on farm workers’ rights at the Georgia Legal Services Program, a nonprofit law firm. “I am arguing that it could be a better job. If you want experienced people, train them. Just because people are easier to supervise, agricultural employers shouldn’t be able to import them. It is not true that Americans don’t want the work. What the farmers are really saying is that blacks just don’t want to work.”

To which J. Larry Stine, an Atlanta lawyer for Stanley Farms and other big farms, replied: “The farmers are not racist or against Americans. They have crops to be picked, and they see that domestics just don’t have their hearts in it.”

And here’s the other part of the problem.

This isn’t just a local labor dispute. When companies hire illegals who are willing to work for little, the taxpayers eventually end up making up the shortfall. The farms profit by paying less, but when Jose brings his family here and his kids and wife end up in the education system and getting free medical care, that is an expense created by the farms and passed on to taxpayers.

All this might be less of an issue if we didn’t have a welfare state, but we do. And bringing in more illegals only expands the political support for the welfare state. Many of the same businessmen who complain about the business climate in more liberal states are doing their part to transform conservative states into liberal states.

Slave labor ends up enslaving the taxpayer. The money saved on agriculture is taken ten times over to cover the medical costs and crime created by cheap foreign labor.

  • objectivefactsmatter

    “They like the Mexicans because they are scared and will do anything they tell them to,”

    Duh. They want the perks of paying black market labor. We are encouraging and justifying so much illegal activity as if laws are just random technical glitches.

    Guess what happens after amnesty? These people are so stupid. It blows my mind.

  • Michael Copeland

    "Experience is the name people give to their mistakes", said Oscar Wilde.
    "Amnesty" is the fine noble-sounding word used to cover failure – failure to uphold the immigration law.

  • Michael Copeland

    How right you are, Mr. Greenfield, to view the labour picture as a whole, within the welfare state. The results to the taxpayer are indeed predictable. Failure to see this is one of the shortcomings of the socialist viewpoint: predictable results are not factored in. The progress is from one sticking plaster to the next.

  • Lady_Dr

    There is more to this story – a lot of young Americans would do this work IF they didn't get so many free hand-outs starting with tuition to get a degree in something that won't prepare them for the job market.

  • onecornpone

    Gathering/sacking onions is often paid by the unit, rather than by the hour. There is a reason for that. Sandbagging! If you want to witness some exceptional work output, put a crew of OTMs in the same field with a few crews of Hispanics. If a knife fight doesn't break out, the effort will be awesome. Capitalism in action.

    Except American workers will do it. They just won't be hired to do it.

    There are probably some factors here, that weren't mentioned. Frankly, Hispanics will do their best to leverage employers to hire their own relatives and friends, often pressuring employers to get rid of OTMs. THAT is a fact. We experience that phenomenon in all phases of the ag industry, from slaughter house, to small town mom and pop businesses who use very few workers. Hispanics will ostracize, and do their best to marginalize those whom they perceive as competitors. My point is, the employer is NOT always the bad guy in this equation.

    The farms profit by paying less, bt when Jose brings his family here and his kids and wife end up in the educational system, and getting free medical care, that is an expense created by the farms and passed on to taxpayers.

    This is true of most minimum wage jobs in the USA, so why are we singling out farmers as evildoers? Are you advocating for oCare? Sounds like it.

    If you read the above quote, alone, it could have written by a union organizer. Actually organizing farm workers is one of the Left's dearest dreams. If you are able to read between the lines of the proposed farm bill, it is evident. Are we to assume the American consumer wants to pay double the price for onions?

    And if you deport the illegals, the crops will rot in the fields…

    To quote myself, from another forum – Almost every agricultural/industrial innovation in the last couple of decades was due to a failure of the labor force to furnish an able, willing human to do the job economically.

    Guess what's next? Another BIG innovation to do those jobs people like the whiner, Sherry Tomason and her ilk are too uppity to do. ROBOTS are being field tested right now, to do menial labor functions like picking and sacking onions, after they are machine dug, and cured.

    Thus the question becomes, WHY do we need more workers? We DON'T! Could these innovations, just over the horizon be the reason for the rush to legalize 20 million illegals, who will be without jobs in less than a decade?

    • DaleTheNerd

      Hi OCP. Glad I found you. You're one of the few people still drawing breath whose opinion I value. I have a serious question for you. Do you think that if the Bamster gets away with these outrageous scandals that this country really is over? Do you think people like you and me are going to spend our golden years in federal prison cells?

      • onecornpone

        Hello my friend. Thank you for the compliment. You are too kind.

        I think the Clown Prince of Chicongo will survive these scandals, because we have no one in DC who will demand the first half-black POTUS resign, for the good of the country. Tricky Dick didn't come up with the idea he should resign his presidency. He was told to give it up by a few in his inner circle, whom he respected enough to listen to. Does King o have anyone whom he respects to that degree? Hard to say.

        As far as us spending our golden years in federal prison cells, I don't plan to. I sometimes wonder if we might be in a work camp though – but realistically we'll probably just be in the 'poor house', in basic survival mode, with everyone else. The playing field will be "leveled", probably to somewhere back around the 1950s era existence. If you look into the food production capabilities the US had back then, it is worrisome. Current farm equipment can probably be nursed along to last about a decade, before falling into such disrepair as to be useless, except as scrap iron.

        Those of us who already understand how to do business will find a way, if allowed, and will be up and thriving again at some point, although the timeline is impossible to predict . Normally the type of upheaval that will need to happen, requires at least fifty years to foment. History has taught us, people must endure a hell of a lot of pain and suffering before they are ready to give their fortunes and their lives to free a people. Right now, most everyone is waiting for their neighbor to take the risk, to make the first move. Where that formula goes off the rails is in the modern era, the numbers of folks who are accustomed to risk taking have diminished. Frankly, there are no longer enough of us to do a successful revolt, but then the Revolutionary War's participation percentages weren't great either. The entitlement class will be dead weight, forget them. The burning question, will the suburban non-entrepreneurial class, who lose their various savings vehicles find themselves ready to join the risk takers for the fight? Hard to predict.

        It is hard to imagine that we won't all be starting over, if only because of the dollar falling off a cliff. I have read a few of the talking heads speculate that the dollar will maintain it's place as the world's benchmark, because the entire world will be broke as church mice. For me, the jury is still out on some of that minutiae. I am probably too ignorant of the systems intricacies, and unable to imagine how much of it will survive, to know how that will shake out. Actually, I'm probably in deep denial. From what I've read over the last two or three years, China's banking system is built on a house of cards, much more fragile than our own.

        Those of us able and willing to work hard will no doubt find our opportunities to thrive again, if this nation doesn't fall into a chasm of darkness, which could render us on the level of some third world banana repblic, similar to the interior of Mexico. In fact, MX may be safer. Most difficult to imagine is how deep we will fall, and how long we will wallow in the ditch. I have marketable skills and experience that will be valuable, because of my trade, People need to eat.

        Whether we learned anything from the Russian revolution or not, will be interesting. They killed off the landowner/farmers thinking the collective could run those operations more effectively. That didn't work out so well.

        • DaleTheNerd

          Thanks for the reasoned response. Your words make me think and reconsider. Letting your thoughts roll around in my braincase, strangely enough, allows me some comfort, since we really are on the same wavelength.

          You're right, nobody in the Clown Prince of Chicongo's inner circle would ever suggest that he resign. That's not the way the ultra-lefties do things, plus the only person this malignant narcissist respects is the guy in his mirror(s).

        • DaleTheNerd

          Reply cont. part 2

          As a serious student of world history, I agree with your assessment regarding political upheaval. A diminishing, yet still large fraction of our population is conditioned to believe in the traditional American idea that our government is a positive world force no matter who is at the helm, so yes, one would think it would take a couple of generations to chip away at the ingrained goodwill. Ironically, l'il o and his minions in trying to disabuse us all of the notion of American exceptionalism is intentionally greasing the skids for our descent into tribal banana republicanism, which as we know from the histories of the Caribbean and Central and South America results in political instability. Political powder kegs are obviously hard to control, so once again, unintended consequences could easily come back to bite the commies in the arse. These ideologues really are dullards, you know, so it's not surprising that their timeline is clogged with many instances of petard hoisting.

        • DaleTheNerd

          Reply cont. part 3

          As for the dollar losing its status as the global currency, I'm not sure what could replace it. The rest of the so-called industrialized world is farther along than the USA in burning through other people's money, so after our dollar collapses the world WILL be broke as church mice, which I guess renders the point moot. So yeah, we are all going to be starting over. As for the Chi-coms, yes, their economy and banking system comprise a house of cards. People seem to forget that they are still a vicious totalitarian communist cesspool. There are about 850 million disenfranchised desperately unhappy people living in near slave labor conditions in China. Their big problem is going to be more social than economic. Not to mention the 100 million surplus men who can't get a date on saturday night because of the sickening practice of female infanticide. Believe me, the reds-in-charge are on edge. They probably will collapse before we do.

        • DaleTheNerd

          Reply cont. Part 4 (Sheesh)

          The hard left must transform more of the military brass to entrench themselves, which they are trying to do with some surprising success. If this happens, which it could, especially if the gun-grab is successful, all bets are off. We can't speculate. The domestic commies do talk about 25 million of us (patriots) having to be sacrificed because of our unshakeable beliefs in systems of self-governance and free enterprise, so what they learned from the Russian Revolution is that it's a template for achieving their version of shangri-la.

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