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The Labor Shortage

Submitted by Mike, Aug 14, 2007 11:37

Lobbyists for farmers and roofing contractors and others will soon be screaming bloody murder. But Congress and the media would do well not to take at face value the squealing of firms losing their cheap-labor subsidy. When the end of the last big guestworker program was being debated in the early 1960s, California farmers claimed that "the use of braceros [Mexican guestworkers] is absolutely essential to the survival of the tomato industry." Instead, termination of the program prompted mechanization which caused a quintupling of production for tomatoes grown for processing, an 89-percent drop in demand for harvest labor, and a fall in real prices.

The same sort of thing happened half a century earlier, when the textile industry predicted disaster if child labor were ended. At a Senate hearing in 1916, one mill owner said that limiting child labor would "stop my machines"; another said "investors would never receive another dividend"; while a third said that ending child labor would "paralyze the country."

We're going to hear a lot more of this sort of thing — the White House is counting on it. Standing up to the coming lobbyist onslaught will be the final stage of the battle against amnesty.

Mark Kirkorian

http://article.nationalreview.com/

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Lobbyists for farmers and roofing contractors and others will soon be screaming bloody murder. But Congress and the media would...	Mike	Aug 14, 2007 11:37
Congress and the media would do well not to take at face value the squealing of firms losing their cheap-labor... [MORE]	Joe	Aug 14, 2007 09:02
Well this editorial is really something. You argue in defense of Chertoff that cracking down on illegal Mexican immigrants will... [MORE]	Douglas Johnson	Aug 13, 2007 23:46
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Diane Alden in Newsmax has written a piece posted last Friday, I believe.It reveals and explains a Senate and a... [MORE]	CS Goldstein	Aug 14, 2007 01:57
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