Urban Farming Agriculturalist

Food Chain Radio Show Host Michael Olson

#929 • July 27, 2013 • Sat 9AM Pacific

Guest: Stephen Murdoch, Vice President Public Relations, Enterprise Canada

Ken Forth, Pres. Foreign Agriculture Resource Management Services / Ontario Farmer

Cheap Labor Isn’t

Should the United States have a guest worker program?

This Poll is closed!!
Should U.S. have a guest worker program?
Yes No
Should U.S. have a guest worker program?
88% 11%

They tell us 53% of U.S. farm laborers are illegal immigrants, which means that over half our food comes courtesy of illegal hands.

Agriculture, along with every other industry that can, hires illegal immigrants because they are a source of cheap labor. But how cheap is cheap labor?

America’s first source of cheap industrial labor was the slave. You could buy them at the market, put them up in a shack out back, work them in the fields all day and pay them nothing but food and clothing. This slave labor was truly cheap for the very few who owned them, but became extremely expensive for the very many who did not own them. Today, a couple hundred years down the line, the costs of cheap slave labor are still being paid in many different ways.

If we were to add all the costs paid by the nation for the cheap slave labor enjoyed by a few, that labor might well add up to a million dollars a day. This give or take, for course, is just my guess!

Today’s cheap labor comes from the hands of illegal immigrants. Like slaves, illegal immigrant laborers do not have many rights, and so may be used and discarded without the tremendous costs now being paid for domestic laborers.

Still, it is becoming increasingly obvious the cheap immigrant labor employed by a few will soon become the very expensive labor paid for by all. The tremendous cost of cheap labor leads us to ask…

Should the U.S. have a guest worker program?

(Food Chain Radio & Forums #929)

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