Take Our Jobs, Please

No, seriously, take them.  That’s what the United Farm Workers of America is asking, in a summer campaign, of the country’s unemployed.  Relocate to beautiful California or Texas.  Harvest onions, grapes and other produce.  Live the idyllic life of a farm worker, in touch with the natural rhythms of the earth, basking in the glories of the sun.  Members of the UFMA are not holding their breaths.

The campaign, as WSJ explains, is intended to draw attention to the role illegal workers play in putting food in our grocery stores and on our plates.  Nearly half (more according to some counts) of the 1.8 million people who toil on U.S. farms are here illegally.

Recently, law makers, (on both the state and federal levels) have been struggling to come up with a method of curbing the number of people entering this country illegally.  Some cite to the need to secure the boarders, others the economic toll it is taking on those Americans here legally who can not find work.

Leaders of the farmer’s union believe that if the flow of migrant workers is staunched, that the U.S. agricultural industry will die.  Opponents of legalization for farm workers, such as migrant worker visas) claim to have a more nuanced argument.  They say that by failing to offer a decent living wage- the average farm laborer earns $8-$9 dollars an hour-, farmers are making it impossible for those here legally to take a job.

Since the Union made its plea to America, they have recorded nearly 5,300 applicants.  Three of those applicants have taken to the fields.

UFMA president Arturo Rodriguez will appear this evening on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report to support the Union’s initiative.