An article in Blaze Media by Ammon Blair of the Texas Public Policy Foundation offers an eye-opening perspective about Big Ag’s relationship with foreign labor. According to Blair, small farms across the United States pay fair wages to local workers and run respectable businesses. On the other hand, corporate food growers and meat processors depend on cheap labor to keep costs down, driving out family farms and modest competition. Any program that helps large profit producers keep their illegal employees “protects the same corporate giants that are bleeding rural communities dry.”
This is a critical perspective to consider in light of the controversy surrounding Trump’s recent promises to establish what he insists is a “work program” for farmers affected by the deportations in the agriculture industry. Though the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, has emphasized that deportations will continue and that Trump’s goal is a 100% American workforce, many Americans are concerned that Trump will cave to the Big Ag lobby and that this proposal will involve an amnesty of some kind.
As you may remember, Secretary Rollins proposed what has been called a “touchback amnesty” in April, which would have illegal alien farm workers return very briefly to their home countries and then return on H-2A visas, waiving the statutory 10-year ban on re-entry for illegal aliens who have been in our country for years. Make no mistake, this would be an amnesty.
Strong Borders maintains the position that amnesty is an unacceptable option and that no industry should have a special privilege or protection from deportations. Anyone who is here illegally must be returned to his or her homeland. This is the path for restoring America’s sovereignty and creating an economy that offers honest business owners a fighting chance to succeed.