Summary
President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed mass deportation plan could severely impact California’s agriculture, where many of the farm workers are undocumented immigrants.
Experts warn that deporting these workers could disrupt the U.S. food supply chain, drive up prices, and increase reliance on imports.
California’s $24.7 billion agricultural industry heavily depends on immigrant labor for producing key crops like almonds, strawberries, and lettuce.
Farm worker advocates argue Trump’s immigration policies aim to discourage labor organizing by creating a more vulnerable workforce. California leaders, including Governor Gavin Newsom, are taking steps to safeguard immigrant rights amid growing concerns.
I understand why Democrats are falling back on arguments like this in the face of open facism, but it’s fitting that this week is the the 86th anniversary of the kristallnacht pogrom. Somebody tell Hitler and Goebbels not to dehumanize and attack all those jews, because it would be, like, totally bad for the economy or something.
The point of Trump’s rhetoric against immigrants is to dehumanize them and scapegoat them for all of the US’s problems. We do the same here in Sweden, when our politicans say we’re being “naiive”, and we call immigrants disloyal to Sweden, welfare frausters, and terrorists. We accuse their culture of being anti-democratic, sexist, and promoting child abuse. We scapegoat them for our crime issues, antisemitism issues, and impoverished neighborhoods.
Just the first step in dehumanizing an entire 1M+ group of people.
Even when the prices go up and it all goes to shit, it’ll still be the immigrants’ fault.
This isn’t “falling back,” anyone who knows how agriculture works in the southwest US has been saying this for years. We have an absurdly huge military, we could secure our southern border at any time. But it’s a fucking stupid idea in terms of cheap labor and relations with Mexico, and it would also mean republicans can’t cry about the border anytime democrats are doing well in DC.
The reason the economic argument is the most prominent is because the economy was also the number one reason people voted for Herr Apfelsine.