The Law of Unintended Consequences...

[the_leander]

Remember how, some months back, there was furore on these very forums over the question of illegal immigration?

Remember how us evil lefties suggested that immigration wasn't all that bad and that if you wanted to end it providing a reasonable wage for native workers would sort the problem out?

And how this was decried as socialism gone mad?

We were dun told the only way to fix things was through draconian measures to drive out the job stealing aliens...

Guess what?

It backfired... A bit..

[M]illions of pounds of watermelons were left to rot in the fields this summer—along with peaches, blackberries and cucumbers—as many of the most dependable and experienced farmworkers steered clear of Georgia and headed north for friendlier states, prompting an epic farm labor shortage in Georgia and desperate howls from its planters.
...
The result: an estimated $300 million in lost crops, with potential losses of $1 billion for the season for the state’s agricultural sector.

Real smooth, lads.

Inb4progressivesareblamed

 

[redrumloa]

Remember how, some months back, there was furore on these very forums over the question of illegal immigration?

Remember how us evil lefties suggested that immigration wasn't all that bad and that if you wanted to end it providing a reasonable wage for native workers would sort the problem out?

And how this was decried as socialism gone mad?

We were dun told the only way to fix things was through draconian measures to drive out the job stealing aliens...

Nope, don't remember that at all. You will have to point out where I said such a thing.

 

[cecilia]

How did Georgia come to suffer such a painful, self-inflicted wound? The proximate cause is the intoxicating power of spreading anti-immigrant sentiment, fanned by incendiary Tea Party–style politics, which have found fertile ground throughout much of the South. HB 87 played an important role in Georgia’s gubernatorial election and was strongly supported by the Republican candidate, Nathan Deal; as Georgia’s new governor, he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Many Georgia farmers supported the law as well. Sixth-generation blackberry farmer Gary Paulk was chair of Deal’s gubernatorial campaign in Irwin County, next door to Tifton. He told Time magazine in June that he stood to lose $250,000 for the summer because of the labor shortage, adding, with no apparent self-awareness, that he finds the law “appalling, because they didn’t think through the implications, at the farm level.”

I guess he's one of those idiots that thinks immigrants are a bunch of lazy bums who have no interest in working......HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

it couldn't happen to a better bunch of racist assholes

 

[Dammy]

But in Alamaba, they did something smart: http://www.newsaegis.com/news/x350481117/Grow-Alabama-recruits-unemployed-for-field-work Imagine that, putting unemployed Americans to work. Yes it's hard work, but it's a job and money.

 

[the_leander]

But in Alamaba, they did something smart

Gotta say, that's not a half bad solution, so long as the workers are trained up (which seems to have been half of the problem with the situation in Georgia). Almost like a public works project in fact.

You will have to point out where I said such a thing.

Actually, for once I don't think it was you re the socialism gone mad, although iirc you were happy on the face of it with the introduction of the laws in question.