{"id":1965,"date":"2011-05-31T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/farmers-complain-about-labor-shortage-due-to-georgia-immigration-law.html"},"modified":"2011-05-31T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T12:00:00","slug":"farmers-complain-about-labor-shortage-due-to-georgia-immigration-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/farmers-complain-about-labor-shortage-due-to-georgia-immigration-law.html","title":{"rendered":"Farmers complain about labor shortage due to Georgia immigration law"},"content":{"rendered":"Jeremy Redmon wrote in the AJC 26 May 2011,\n\nFarmers tie labor shortage to state’s new immigration law, ask for help<\/a>\n
\nMigrant farmworkers are bypassing Georgia because of the state\u2019s tough\nnew immigration enforcement law, creating a severe labor shortage among\nfruit and vegetable growers here and potentially putting hundreds of\nmillions of dollars in crops in jeopardy, agricultural industry leaders\nsaid this week.\n<\/blockquote>\nWho could have predicted such a thing?\n

\nAnyway, how is it going?\n\n\n

\n\n<\/a>\nCharles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable\nGrowers Association, said he has been in close contact with Labor\nCommissioner Mark Butler and Agricultural Commissioner Gary Black\nabout the shortage, calling it the most severe he has seen. Hall said\nit’s possible state officials could hold job fairs to steer some of\nGeorgia\u2019s unemployed workers to these farm jobs, which pay $12.50 an\nhour on average. The state\u2019s unemployment rate is now at 9.9 percent.\n

\nFarmers, however, say they often have little luck recruiting Georgia\nresidents to work in their fields because it is temporary, hot and\nphysically demanding. To recruit more workers, some farmers are offering\nsigning bonuses, Hall said.\n

\nThe law doesn’t take effect until July 1 but is already making migrant\nHispanic farmworkers skittish, said Dick Minor, a partner with Minor\nBrothers Farm in Leslie in southwest Georgia who says he is missing\nabout 50 of his workers now, threatening as much as a third of his crops.\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWhat, us worry?\n

\nThe author of Georgia\u2019s HB 87 — Republican Rep. Matt Ramsey of\nPeachtree City — repeated Thursday that the law is not set to take\neffect until July 1.\n

\n\u201cAnd there is nothing in House Bill 87 that anybody that is in our\ncountry legally has to worry about,\u201d he said.\n<\/blockquote>\nUnless you happen to be Hispanic or have a Spanish surname or\ngot a deep tan from the sun….\n

\nThen you get an opportunity to be considered for a vacation in ICE’s\nprison in Georgia, which is run by CCA.\nThe same company that wants to build a private prison in Lowndes County.\nSpend that tax money on education instead.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeremy Redmon wrote in the AJC 26 May 2011, Farmers tie labor shortage to state’s new immigration law, ask for help Migrant farmworkers are bypassing Georgia because of the state\u2019s tough new immigration enforcement law, creating a severe labor shortage among fruit and vegetable growers here and potentially putting hundreds of millions of dollars in […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,202,14,321,2,1381,72,178],"tags":[8750,8817,4093,2710,8701,8830,8730,727,1897,7,75,1297,218],"class_list":["post-1965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-agriculture","category-economy","category-food-and-drink","category-government","category-immigration","category-incarceration","category-vlcia","tag-agriculture","tag-cca","tag-farm","tag-food","tag-georgia","tag-immigration","tag-incarceration","tag-jail","tag-labor","tag-lowndes-county","tag-prison","tag-private-prison","tag-profit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-vH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}