Ga. immigrant crackdown backfires

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57551.html

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal’s program to replace fleeing migrant farmworkers with probationers backfired when some of the convicted criminals started walking off their jobs because field work was too strenuous, it was reported Wednesday.

In a story datelined Leslie, in rural south Georgia, the Associated Press writes of convicts calling it quits at 3:25 p.m. – more than two-and-a-half hours before the crew of Mexicans and Guatemalans they replaced.

“Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, `Bonk this, I ain’t with this, I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer working at a farm in Leslie. “They just left, took off across the field walking.”

Georgia, which passed an Arizona-style immigration bill in April that is due to take effect next month, has seen thousands of undocumented immigrants flee the state. A state survey released last week found 11,080 vacant positions on state farms that needed to be filled to avoid losing crops.

At the same time as the survey’s release, Deal, a first-term Republican, announced a program to link the state’s 100,000 probationers with farmers looking to fill positions, the vast majority of which pay less than $15 per hour.

The AP reported the first group of probationers began working last week at an Americus farm owned by Dick Minor, the president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association.

Minor’s farm was the second-largest recipient of federal farm subsidies in Georgia, receiving $11.4 million between 2000 and 2009, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The executive director of the fruit and vegetable growers association did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jerry Gonzalez, the executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, said only the largest state farms have begun hiring probationers to replace migrant workers.

“There hasn’t been widespread acceptance of the governor’s plan by the farming community,” he said.

And former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, on her blog, compared the practice of sending probationers to work on farms to an earlier practice of Southern police departments arresting black men on dubious charges and sentencing them to work on local farms that needed the labor.

“The suggestion of sending probationers into the fields to solve our self-inflicted economic wound is nothing more than retrogressing to an earlier shameful time in our state’s history of victimizing hundreds of mostly black men and condemning them to near slavery, while the rest of us watch silently,” she wrote. “Now as then, many of the potential victims have poor if any legal representation and few employment opportunities.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

cant handle the heat boys ...? hahahaha hell ya

i wish this has a "LIKE" button.. i wouldve double "like" this post.. lol

This is Gold lol

From "They tuk er jerbs!" to "Hawld on! come back! and get r done! please?"

hahahaah maybe we did need this GA law to go in in order to cause a criss and stop lazy racists claims that they take jobs, always wondered how the minutemen didn t have a job they had to tend to lol

lmfao xD this made my day a lil bit better

I saw this report on Spanish broadcast a few days ago. Thank you for posting this. :- ). I hope Senator Menendez mentions this 1000x over in the future senate debate on CIR.

Why is that guy wearing a doorag and long sleeves in the hot blazing sun!? lol