r/LeopardsAteMyFarm • u/Conscious-Quarter423 • 6h ago

so MAGA farmers chased off immigrant farmworkers because Trump said they were taking American jobs, now they can’t find anyone to pick their crops. Funny how the pick-yourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps crowd suddenly needs someone else to do the work

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u/IcyCommunication8984 5h ago

Between slaves, forced labor from their own 14 children, or underpaid migrants, have American farms ever been successful without using exploited workers for labor?

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u/defaulticus 4h ago

If you're going to count child labor then that's basically every farm since agriculture was invented. Basically the only farms that have ever not been that way are modern mechanized row crop farms where all the work can now be done by machines. Which most American farms are, but fruit and orchards still haven't had a good machine invented to do the harvesting yet.

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u/Former_Mobile3101 5h ago

Do you really think that all immigrants that work on farms get exploited?

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u/IcyCommunication8984 5h ago

Absolutely. They are paid pennies on the dollar.

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u/Jar_of_Cats 5h ago

I dont think they watched the contents of the video

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u/Former_Mobile3101 5h ago

Maybe at a few, mainly being bigger corporate farms, but for the rest of them not really. Independent farms are more fair with their pay. I know there a lot of immigrants get taken advantage of across multiple industries but that doesn't mean most or all.

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u/IcyCommunication8984 5h ago

Being able to take advantage of these workers is the reason why American farmers hire them. Tax free, less than minimum wage, no workers comp.

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u/PaulblankPF 3h ago

I had my own home repair business and worked on farmers homes. Chatted them up, most of them go through the trouble of paying for the visas, housing, food, doing all the paperwork JUST so they can pay them as little as they do. The cost of all that other stuff still is less than if they just paid someone a living wage to do the same work. Since it’s seasonal work they send the workers back home between seasons and this is what allows them to pay so little.

https://nationalaglawcenter.org/state-compilations/agpay/minimumwage/

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u/PhilPipedown 5h ago

There's a reason that they can't find US workers. Also a reason they won't do the work themselves.

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u/HickAzn 5h ago

Not all. Just 99%