{"id":1922,"date":"2012-01-04T12:27:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T17:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2012-01-04T12:27:59","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T17:27:59","slug":"a-followup-on-georgias-2011-anti-immigration-bill-georgia-farms-lost-74-9-million-because-of-labor-shortages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2012\/01\/04\/a-followup-on-georgias-2011-anti-immigration-bill-georgia-farms-lost-74-9-million-because-of-labor-shortages\/","title":{"rendered":"A followup on Georgia&#8217;s 2011 anti-immigration bill: Georgia farms lost $74.9 million because of labor shortages"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: left; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Medium Rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8584504377\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>I was a staunch opponent of HB 87, which established a number of tough new measures to combat the presence of undocumented workers in Georgia.<\/p>\n<p>Even though most of the law&#8217;s provisions weren&#8217;t even in effect in 2011, migrant farm workers &#8212; many of them undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America &#8212; stayed away from Georgia by the thousands. Farmers throughout rural Georgia subsequently faced a labor crisis for the demanding and poorly paid work.<\/p>\n<p>From today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajc.com\/news\/commissioner-lack-of-labor-1287760.html\" target=\"_blank\">Commissioner: Lack of labor hurt Georgia farms in the AJC<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A shortage of workers in the field caused $10 million in crop losses for 500 Georgia farmers who responded to a study called for by Georgia&#8217;s new immigration law.<\/p>\n<p>The tough laws Georgia passed last year as House Bill 87 likely scared some workers away,  the study concluded.<\/p>\n<p>Figures released earlier this year said the total losses on more than 40,000 Georgia farms was $74.9 million 0n seven major crops, and that 11,080 jobs in the fields went begging.<\/p>\n<p>State Agriculture Commissioner Gary W. Black said one in five farmers surveyed reported they had trouble finding enough workers in 2011, 40  percent said that the federal guest-worker program was so cumbersome, complex and slow that it was not usable, and farmers can expect more worker shortages this year.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s mention in the piece of the bill being somehow &#8220;tweaked&#8221; in this year&#8217;s legislative session, but I don&#8217;t expect that to happen in any substantive way.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no doubt that the economic damage was far worse than these estimates, especially in Georgia&#8217;s struggling rural counties. Fewer workers means fewer sales of all sorts of retail items, less demand for housing, and so forth and so on. <\/p>\n<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"4\" style=\"float: none; margin:4px 0 4px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Another large rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"0042810896\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 336;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 280;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was a staunch opponent of HB 87, which established a number of tough new measures to combat the presence of undocumented workers in Georgia. Even though most of the law&#8217;s provisions weren&#8217;t even in effect in 2011, migrant farm&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2012\/01\/04\/a-followup-on-georgias-2011-anti-immigration-bill-georgia-farms-lost-74-9-million-because-of-labor-shortages\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[78],"class_list":["post-1922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-immigration"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gN9R-v0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}