Tough talk about immigration reform is hurting the Florida citrus industry. Fruit is going left unpicked, thanks to rumors about INS crack-downs.
As many as 6-million boxes of oranges may go unharvested in Florida this year because of a shortage of fruit pickers made worse by fears about what changes may come in immigration law.
The citrus season usually ends in late June, but will extend to at least late July this year with juice processors hoping to get as many oranges as possible off trees…
Orange production in the state could become the lowest since 1992…
Growers have reported difficulty finding enough workers. Industry officials say labor supply was tight from the beginning of the season in October, but grew worse by the middle of May when a large segment of the Hispanic labor force seemed to leave the state…
Lake Wales citrus grower Marty McKenna said word had spread through the Hispanic community to return home if they wanted U.S. jobs in the future.
But inflaming us-against-them emotions seemed like such a good idea at the time. Bush’s polls were down and gay marriage was starting to wane as a sure-fire firing-up mechanism. Who would have thought Big Agriculture would suffer in the end? We’ll just add a failed Florida citrus season to the list of unintended consequences the Bush administration couldn’t possibly see coming.
This is hysterically ironic: All the bigots in Florida did all their shouting, pissing, and moaning about “the brown horde trying to invade and conquer America”, so the brown horde left, leaving “those crops in the field” for the bigots to pick or let rot!
This is too, too funny.
Katherine Harris is good at picking lemons.
Pay a living wage for picking that fruit, and I bet it won’t be a problem for long.
The stalwart right wing GREAT LAND OWNERS OF CITRUS in Florida were prime movers in the Bush Debacle-(Remember the Harris Heiress who put Dubya in the White House?)-and now…HOW SWEET IT IS that their divine wind has finally brought them the whirlwind that they so “richly” deserve!