We ARE a soft people...

Found this via Lucianne.com at www.theatlanticwire.com:

Alabama agriculture officials are stumped over how to keep farms operating now that the state's draconian new immigration law chased away all of the low paid (however illegal) labor. The latest idea: Hire prisoners. The Associated Press reports:

The nursery and landscape industry will need as many as 4,000 workers in southern counties early in 2012 to get ready for the growing season, he said, and forestry and farming will require still more laborers. Unable to find legal residents to fill all the employment gaps, [Deputy commissioner with the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries Brett] Hall said the Agriculture Department is consulting with the Department of Corrections to determine whether prisoners could do some of the work.

But we thought America was experiencing an economic downturn, leaving many Americans out of work. A quick Google search reveals that Alabama is actually worse off than the rest of the country, with a 9.3 percent rate of unemployment. What's wrong with helping out on a farm? Is the pay crappy? That's actually not it:

Farmers have complained of a lack of field hands since parts of the law took effect in late September. Many have said legal residents aren't physically able or mentally tough enough to perform the work, and others won't do so because it doesn't pay enough.

Hall said the agriculture positions pay well above minimum wage, but many Americans find them too "physically taxing" to perform.

This sounds just like that comedic mockumentary that Hollywood dreamed up a few years ago, A Day Without a Mexican, except it's not that funny because it's actually happening. Also kind of sad.

(End of story, my comments follow.)

My first full time job was as a field hand chopping weeds with a hoe that had been fit with a 18" handle, the kind that Caesar Chavez successfully fought to eliminate because of it's long term effects on the backs of farm workers. He was right, use one of them for too long and you'd have a permanent curve to your spine.

That was my first job out of high school, all of my coworkers were either in high school or newly graduated like myself. Where were the illegals? Well they actually KNEW something about farming so they were working the tractors, combines, etc. Heck of a nice bunch too, always very friendly. On payday they'd go zipping into town all piled in a pickup shouting "Vino, seniorita, musica" to us as they drove by.

That was my FIRST full time job. It made me glad to join the Navy, learn a trade and not spend too many years doing grunt work.

After I'd moved down here to Texas in '98 I spent some time bouncing around jobs. As part of my work history I signed onto a temp agency. I'd take ANY job, there were jobs I'd go on where I was the only Anglo and only non Spanish speaking worker. The white foremen didn't seem to have too high a regard for me. Guess I looked like white trash scraping the bottom of the barrel for his next cheap drunk. Whatever.

What's the point of this trip down memory lane? Well IMHO if you're motivated enough to work there is NO job beneath you. Physically taxing ones (farm labor) can be done by men in their late teens and early twenties. We've certainly got enough of them, far too many on the welfare rolls and dropping out of school. Other jobs are easily done by the older (and fatter) members of our nation. Please remember, I'm speaking from personal experience.

Want to motivate the native born Americans to pick jobs formerly done by illegal aliens? Just bring the gravy train known as public assistance to a screaming halt and pay a decent wage for the physically arduous work instead of the chicken feed thrown to those on their way to joining what has been forming into our national underclass.

If we want to be a nation with a "can do" attitude, a lot of that mindset has to come from being faced with "must do" choices, i.e. "I MUST find a job of ANY sort that will feed me, pay my rent and keep clothing on my back or else I'll be hungry, homeless and damned near naked."

If it sounds harsh it's only because it is. Face it, life isn't Burger King and by always ennabling the sloth of our less fortunate we only do them and us a disservice. As proof I offer the obesity "epidemic" so prevalent amongst our "poor". Sorry, you get obese from not working off the calories you ingest, end of story there. Nobody wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror and screams, "Honey, call the doctor!! I done got the fat bug!" Once again, thats the voice of my personal experience speaking (50 lbs. overweight). I didn't put on the lard overnight nor did anyone else with a gut on them.

So if we're to be a nation of hardworkers we need the necessity of hard work. Just my opinion.