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The results of these actions will affect us far more than those immigrants.

He could offer these immigrants some sort of work for citizenship plan or start treating them like fellow humans.

I mean, I agree megacorps making bank off the back of undocumented workers is horrible, but one way to solve that is to grant them citizenship, let them vote and form unions.

Absolutely.

Framing this whole thing as if we would be rallying behind the mega corps who run on (what should be completely illegal) exploitation is a bit weird.

The industry only relies on cheap labour because farmers aren't getting their fair share of the upstream profits.

It's almost as if we're seeing the end result of decades of bad immigration policy.

Maybe if everyone knows a law sucks, and no one obeys the law because it sucks, and a huge chunk of our ability to not have famine is based on not obeying that law... maybe, just maybe that law should change to one that people can obey without anybody starving to death.

That's probably the only good thing about Trump. Trump is so brazen with fucking around that the rest of America gets to experience the finding out part. Trump is fucking with illegal immigration and America is about to find out how much they depend on illegal immigrants (because I doubt it's only this one industry).

Thank you for genuinely making me laugh amidst this horror show.

Illegal immigration is principally a clerical issue. A problem of documents. If you give them documents, then they're not illegal immigrants anymore. They're already doing the labor. They should be given legal recognition and protection.

There shouldn't be such a thing as illegal immigration. If people want to come and work, let them. This whole bullshit system and narrative was set up to create a permanent underclass of labor to exploit in the first place.

lol... all our food is imported from the US and mexico (except a few seasonal fruits and potatoes in the summer)

Well it won’t bother Trump supporters at all until they discover oranges suddenly cost $12 each. Then they’ll throw tantrums hoping Trump will notice and sign an executive order reducing orange prices to $0.05.

I was in Georgia when they enacted the Live scan law. Let me tell you how it went down. Farmers, as in individual/family farms that weren't owned by large corps, didn't have the liquidity to pay more for labor. Those small/medium farms went on the news and begged for people to come and work, talking about how they had stuff rotting on the vine and how most folks wouldn't even finish out their first day. Mid size farmers aren't exactly poor, but most businesses don't survive just not having labor and not turning revenue, and by the end of that first growing season, a whole lot of small and mid-size farms ended up selling the farm to large corps or else just outright shutting down.

There is practically zero chance that the farm industry will start paying living wages overnight. They might could do it, given time, oversight, direction, and aid (there's A LOT of downward pressure on the prices farms sell at), but it's just not going to happen in one growing season. Realistically, this could be real, real, real bad. The central valley has a huge ag industry, and we grow a LOT of non-grain crops (except corn) for the rest of the country and the world. There's some crops, like Pistachios, where the central valley is one of two places in the whole world where there's meaningful agricultural operations for them. We also produce a lot of the good eating oranges (have you ever eaten a Florida Valencia Orange? They taste like eating pure sour armpit, there's a reason they make them into juice) and other citrus. So, not only are we going to see food shortages (and some pretty specific food supply shortages for the rest of the world), but probably a lot of the farms around here are going to end up being corporate owned, leaving everyone here poorer and worse off than they were before.

You are not wrong, but I don't really think abusing the disenfranchised to the extent that they aren't getting paid at all while food rots away is what I would call a "good path" to living wages.

First off, no one is getting living wages for the work yet, and we have no evidence to suggest they will.

Secondly, even if this does lead to that, maybe we could have found a path forward without all the unnecessary added suffering?

I dunno, it just feels really fucked up to be spinning this like the only outcome is "living wages" when all it has actually done so far is cause additional harm.