By Federale
01/29/2013
Someone should be happy, perhaps Steve Sakuma. Sakuma is not an apple farmer, but the principle remains the same. The principle being farmers lie about their ever present illegal alien farm laborer shortage. And it proves, again, the Obama Regime’s ending immigration law enforcement in the United States. (h/t NRO)
CNBC January 28, 2013 by John Carney
Washington Apple Pickers Miraculously Defeat the Invisible Farm Labor Crisis of 2012
Remember the great farm labor crisis of 2012?
Of course you don’t. Because there was no farm labor crisis in 2012.
A report from Capital Press, which bills itself as "The West’s Ag Site," makes it clear that Washington’s apple growers — one of the most frequent alleged victims of the farm labor crisis — actually wound up with a record number of pickers. But somehow this still counts as a shortage.
A record number of people worked in Washington’s record apple harvest this past fall, but still some apples were left on trees because more pickers were needed, sources say.
There were 55,653 seasonal apple workers working in October, 54,543 in September and the previous high was 48,065 in October of 2009, said John Wines, an economist for the state Department of Employment Security in Olympia. Among other duties, Wines has been tracking tree fruit labor for 18 years.
The 55,653 workers is indicative of the record 129.2-million-box crop requiring more workers but does not mean there was not a shortage, he said.
The department’s monthly survey of 1,100 growers of all crops, not just tree fruit, showed the shortage peaked at 8.8 percent more workers needed in September 2012 while peaking at 8.6 percent in September 2011, Wines said.
It does tell us that despite the vocal complaints of the illegal alien lobby in Washington, there has been no immigration enforcement in Washington if the supply of illegal alien farm labor increased in 2012. That is a pretty big amnesty for illegal alien farm laborers to go with the other Obama Regime amnesties.
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