Bro stop gaslighting. Literally everyone knows illegal immigrant farm workers are exploited and underpaid. Shit is common knowledge.
Just do a simple Google search.
Background Watch our short film to hear six farm workers share their experience living and working in the U.S. for low wages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeDMGA4OvN0&t=1s In the words of Cesar Chavez: “(Farm workers) are involved in the planting and the cultivation and the harvesting of the...
nfwm.org
Let's see what your source says: Average earnings of nonsupervisory farmworkers is $16.62 / hour. AKA above minimum wage.
Illegal labor is obviously exploited, but here's the distinction you miss. Folks love to imply that if only farms paid minimum wage Americans would do those jobs. Yet a lot of illegal labor makes above minimum wage, which means that entire premise you parrot is bullshit. We're not talking paying minimum wage to get Joe American to work the fields, you're talking a massive premium on that with all the downstream effects.
If illegal immigrants come into the country and have children, the vast majority fall below the poverty line and qualify for SNAP, Medicaid, etc. If those illegal immigrants were never allowed to illegally enter, all this additional cost would have never happened. Pretty simple concept.
And these workers never upskill or move up in wages? They just forever stay under the poverty line?
That's a nice theory except second generation immigrants frequently outperform natives in income mobility and business generation.
On top of that, any illegal alien adults who come in and then apply for asylum also qualify for Medicaid and the other social services. They literally just need to apply for asylum.
Which is an outright lie since most states require the application be approved, filing alone isn't enough.
If you give them citizenship, then it would be even more expensive because they'd all qualify for Medicaid. You're literally advocating for mass amnesty for MILLIONS of new people of a large majority we'd have to pay Medicaid for. GTFO. No one wants to pay for that shit.
Which is offset by taxes and economic productivity. Never mind that a lot, if not most illegal immigrants wouldn't even hit the threshold in states like California.
Employing undocumented aliens with zero leverage is even more exploitative.
Right, which is why the best option for ending exploitation of farm laborers is a path to citizenship. Let's refer to your source you didn't read. Oh right, it literally calls out the H-2A program as exploitative.
"As a response, farm employers and industry associations have lobbied Congress to reduce the required wage rates for migrant farmworkers in the H-2A visa program—known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR)—and even sued the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to invalidate a new methodology for setting AEWRs."
Because Koreans do not have time, work long hours and there are restaurants and take out places literally on every block. It's much more convenient ordering or eating out. I know this for a fact. I'm from South Korea.
Koreans spend about 14% of consumption on eating out and another 14% on eating in. The US has the same 50/50 split, except total spending only comes out to about 10 or 11%. So again, Americans spend less than half of what South Koreans spend on food as a share of disposable income, whether it's eating out or eating in.
TLDR: Food is significantly more expensive in South Korea.
Why in the world would Americans need to spend DOUBLE just because we pay fruit farm workers a fairer wage?
This is a complete straw man.
This all started when you claimed we should just import our food stuffs, like Japan and South Korea, even though those countries spend double what we do per capita on food. I've repeatedly asked you how much more Americans should be willing to pay for food, and all you do is prattle on about sources you don't read or even comprehend. So again, if we eliminate all illegal labor, how much more do you think the average American's grocery bill will be?
You do realize there are entire countries in the world that import almost all their fruits right? South Korea and many Middle Eastern countries for example imports a huge chunk of their fruits - yea it's a little bit more expensive for fruit and veggies but not ridiculously so.
