A harvest of hypocrisy: Strict enforcement of immigration rules will leave crops to rot in South GA [View All]

Now that Congress has given up on comprehensive immigration reform, the hypocrisy of claims that the problem can be solved by merely enforcing existing law is about to be exposed on South Georgia's farms.

Agricultural interests, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, are already worrying out loud that if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials crack down on illegal hiring this year, as it should, it will leave hundreds of millions of dollars of crops in the field to rot. That's a very different message than that preached in public by the state's political leadership, including U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, who claim to support stricter enforcement of current immigration laws as a precondition for tackling comprehensive reform.

Both Georgia senators abandoned a bipartisan effort last month to enact a top-to-bottom rewrite of laws regarding the use of immigrant labor. Among other things, the failed proposal — which Isakson and Chambliss helped draft — would have streamlined the process to allow more legal temporary immigrant workers into the country to pick crops. Afraid of a backlash, American business and agricultural interests did not push hard enough for that change and other major reforms. They talked in political back channels about the need for comprehensive reform, but they fell largely silent once critics started attacking a proposal to provide temporary legal status to many of the workers they have lured here to produce food, products and services for American consumers.

Now they are reaping what they failed to sow.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/king/stories/2007/07/11/immigrationed_0712.html

No doubt, all crops across the USA.