Is illegal immigration the problem or is farming the problem?

Interesting article and assumptions. The real train is heading towards Globalization and Economic Unions as the Europeans; These unions take place with countries that are adjacent and have linked borders. Our only option is Latin America, whether now or in 20 years the inevitable will take place. The English do indeed pay an arm and a leg for agricultural products; I am not too certain that we want to go that route; first, let's fix the dependand state in fossil fuels; then we worry about paying 10 dollars for a head of lettuce. The lack of incentives and good administration in the agricultural sector will always lead to a disaster whether now or later.
We need more versatility; we could at least design means to produce our own renewable fuel from the agricultural sector; the incentive is either higher salaries or more appeals for "someone" in the current big overpopulated big cities of our nation to migrate to the country side...whether citizens or non-citizes it makes no difference... Rather non-citizens than citizens.

China is already becoming a great challenge to our economy. China is the sleeping giant of the Economic global economy. The Chinese have a great resource and they are not wasting what minute to make use of it: Human resources, hand labor: AKA People. We are behaving backwards, instead of working and preparing to compete, we are preparing to kick illegals ou and pay higher salaries which would translate in higher prices and even inflation. $10 dollar head of lettuce anyone?

If we avoid legalizing these illegal immigrants now; what would we do for labor in the future? Import labor like many European countries did and have for instance a Muslim subclass that trully lives of wellfare and is indeed marginalized and ineffective? As far as common sense and true reasearch dictates, Hispanics for the most part are well integrated to society by the second generation even when illegals and the second generation http://pewhispanic.org/ becomes Natives by the grace of geography and migration. Many current reasearch outthere actually misleads portariting a class of 100% Hispanics dependant on wellfare and or in prison; there is even assumptions made on 2.5 trillion dollars in wellfare and Social Security and ignores the Economican benefit and great positive impact of potential new residents; the truth is far from fiction though. One runs the 10 to 1 probability of finding a beggar and a homeless who is An American Native today than an Illegal Homeless or Beggar...That speaks for itself. How about we deport our unemployeed and hire illegals?

I support this idea if it means that we stop having to hear the carnard about "family farms" being destroyed by "the death tax".

That being said, I think given our current balance of trade deficits, we'd are ill-advised to be considering ways to import more stuff rather than raise the wages of working people.

p_lukasiak;

I do not know exactly how this future world (Brave World) that we are entering is going to look like. Since the Enlightment period and industrialization, the trend has been to grant more value to the individual and that includes raise in wages. The Chinese are a force that is not to be ignored. Not only because of what you have already mentioned (trade deficit) but also because of many other factors. We have as the Europeans and even the Latin Americans also have up to a certain extend, a Standard for working and the average 40 days per week or so; there are working laws right now even south of the border.

The Chinese do not have that, previously mentioned working laws; what they have (The Chinese) is employees working 7 days per week sometimes 12 hour days... at only cents per hour without benefits... even less that what people get paid South of the border and we consider that awfull. The Chinese workers are not, obviously, well informed by any means yet of what potentiality (Salary-wages) and how valuable their work is as it is reflected here in the US or Europe.

The Chinese would break our economy if we fail to compete by either producing products, pardon my redundancy, that are of low value for resale or by our inability of keeping up with production. Not to mention that we are not exporting to China enough product and hence the deficit... But we are buying their product. Chinese factories seem capable to produce anything at low cost; they are versatile in that sense; something we have not done since we normally choose one line of product to be worked for 30 years or untill a company takes a nose dive. Not to mention that this also limits our workforce if the employee can only do one job and has limited skill. It is by all means for our own benefit that even illegals get educated. The better prepared we are the better we will be in a time of Economical crisis.

We will be needing human resource and it is there where the Latin Americans are going to come in handy.

Unfortunally, we can't raise wages without affecting the product's value in the market. The more we pay the employee the less we can sell the product for. The only solution might be indeed to share the wealth with the employee as many other countries are engaging in. So, if the company makes the profit, the employee gets a portion of it that is higher and reflected in stock options and more financial benefits even direct pay...This would also inject fuel to the economy and hopefully will keep it healthy if we manage to avoid inflation... Right now this ground is uncharted territory. It appeared as if we have tried it but we actually haven't... we still have CEO's bankrupting companies and still been paid billions while an employee of 20 years in the company can't still not retire due to a marginal salary and lack of economic resources... The failing CEO has been rewarded for bankrupcy while the employee suffers miserably after 20 years of work ata job... Many agree with this trend and those also belive we should carry a whip and whip ourselves in the back and thank the employer for the job security even in light of the transaction being a 2 way street.. We must see where the trend is going and we must engage the challenges so we can succesfully keep up the pace of globalization.

Thomas Friedman has two books that are very good, good author: http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm

Richard...

you had me right up until you endorsed Thomas Friedman

Annonymous:

Don't panic! It is indeed the free thinkers world TODAY...The Information Age. Thomas Friedman seemed like a good source for reference... Who would you have replaced him with in my post? I mean, If I had not lost you... Who calls your attention that you feel would have been a better matched endorsement in my post?

http://pewhispanic.org/topics/index.php?TopicID=2

Farming is inherently an unskilled job and will never pay a decent wage. The only way for a farmer to lead a middle class life is to own a lot of land and hire illegals to work the land. Given this fact and the fact that the USA is a developed country why is USA still farming. Instead it should let the farming be done in poor countries and concentrate on improving the type of jobs available domestically towards more skilled jobs. Skilled jobs will produce enough products to sell to the world and enjoy good lifestyle at home too . At the same time we abolish subsidies and save a lot of money. We can also turn most of the farmland into parks and increase recreation and tourism value of the country

Prab:

Your approach sounds interesting. Let me ask a few questions and add a few comments. How would we compete with the endless and powerfull Human resource of the Chinese for instance? As of right now we have an economic treaty with them, yet we are the ones buying and they are the ones producing for us to pick up the tab; this has made the Chinese quite wealthy and increasingly an economic threat and lead.

Paying higher salaries sound wondefull ... although, there is this economic precept/principle that if an employer spends more in salaries THEN his profits also decreases even to a halt sometimes... This is how we have lost so many jobs to China and India... The more that we get paid, the more the product is going to cost...This puts us out of business in a Gloal economic market with others competing against us with cheaper product that is by far less expensive than ours.

Many are the Economic Unions that have formed or that are in the process of forming... The world seems to be grouping by continents as the Europeans did... Our options are quite limited here..LatinAmerica is the only piece of land attached to NorthAmerica... Are you sugesting we segregate the population by categories of skilled and not skilled? Latin America is very rich in resources, not only natural as Petroleum, Mineral Coal, Agricultural, you name it...But also rich in professionals without jobs... if our future union is inevitable with the Latin Americans what do you propose? Send all agricultural work South of the boder and bring all educated persons North to where we are? Right now we are having trouble just keeping children in school to graduate from Highschool... The numbers are indeed catastrophic in US schools.