Ag in the Election
This year's presidential race is, for lack of a better word, frightening. Some of the radical ideas that have been thrown onto the table are extremely scary and unsettling. Make's one question where our nation's "leaders" are taking us. So for this week's blog, I decided to filter all of the ideas out there and focused on, you guessed it, agriculture in the 2016 presidential election. After reading a few articles, I saw some fearful things.
Donald Trump. Kind of makes you sick just thinking of the guy. And this has no longer become a republican and democrat disagreement. This is a horrible man that will destroy the agricultural economy (among other things) of the US if elected president.
It's no secret to anyone that Mr. Trump wants to build a wall down on the Texas and Mexico border. This, in theory, would effectively keep out thousands of illegal immigrants that come across the border every year. He claims that he wants to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. But many farmers in California could see their farmhands, and livelihoods be shipped out of the US. According to politico.com, 1.4 million undocumented immigrants work in the agricultural industry. That accounts for 60% of the ag workforce. Farmers in the US would be put out of business because if immigrants do get sent back, or if lawmakers make it more difficult work immigrants to get work visas. Documented citizens just do not want to do the back-breaking work of being out in the fields from sun-up to sun-down, bending over and pick tomatoes, or dig carrots.
In short, if Trump is elected, say goodbye to America as we know it.
I did not know that Donald Trump wanted to do that. That is crazy to think about how greatly that would impact our economy and society if we lost all those immigrants that help with our agriculture. I did not think about the impact that deporting these immigrants would have on America.
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