Earlier this week, a French news network published a video report that featured comments that were made by a farmer named Joe Del Bosque of California, who issued a warning to President-elect Donald Trump’s new mass deportation operation would ultimately end up depriving those in the agricultural industry of cheap labor, which means that farmers will then have to pass on the increased cost of production to consumers. In other words, Mr. Del Bosque wants illegal migrants to come flooding into the country, regardless of the spikes in crime and drain on resources.
That’s about as un-American as you can get.
“You know, we can’t have deportations here because it would disrupt our food supply for the country. We really don’t think that anybody wants that,” the farmer went on to say on camera according to The Western Journal.
The network, France 24, then shared that illegal migrants are 44 percent of the agricultural workers in the United States. Instead of coming out and saying how illegal immigration is a betrayal of American citizens, Del Bosque flipped it into a justification for blackmail.
“Without our people, our farms will come to a stop,” he remarked. “We will not be able to harvest our fruits and vegetables and nuts, and that will interrupt the food chain for Americans. And it would possibly increase food prices tremendously, too.”
US Farmers Fret Over Trump’s Deportation Planshttps://t.co/MdQyas1AVF pic.twitter.com/ebiK7drB8S
— Channels Television (@channelstv) December 31, 2024
In other words, allow us to maintain our current profits by continuing to employ the cheap labor of illegal immigrants. Otherwise, you will pay the price. The good news, of course, is that the playbook for those who make this argument has never changed.
“[W]ould any sane nation make war on cotton?” Hammond asked his colleagues in a speech delivered on Mar. 4, 1858. “Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us we could bring the whole world to our feet.” The speech’s full context made clear that when Hammond said “make war,” he meant “attack slavery.” Like most Southern politicians of his day, the senator represented perhaps the most privileged class of men in American history. Speaking of aristocrats in their own minds, then-President Barack Obama visited Del Bosque’s California farm in 2014.
Admittedly, Del Bosque’s comments do not merit quite the scorn now reserved for those of antebellum slavery apologists. The difference, however, is a matter of degrees, not of kind, for the argument is essentially the same.
This isn’t an isolated attitude in our country either. Many modern American institutions are all about cheap labor, though they crouch their support for it so as to not look similar to the slavers of old.
“For instance, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its employment numbers downward by more than 800,000 jobs for the period between March 2023 and March 2024, a Goldman Sachs economist called the revision ‘erroneous’ and ‘misleading’ because BLS’s methodology did not account for strong job growth among illegal immigrants,” the report continued.
Fortunately, our incoming president has a clear, levelheaded perspective on this issue and has already started to put pieces in place to get illegal migrants deported to their country of origin and ensure that Americans have access to the opportunities they, as actual citizens of the nation, deserve.
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