Cain’s alligator solution to immigration draws ire of GOP Hispanic group

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… One need only look at the worker shortages in Georgia and Arizona agriculture sectors to see the dire consequences of enforcement-only strategies that don’t address the needs of America’s economy. Forty percent of Yuma Arizona’s lettuce crop went un-harvested after 100,000 Hispanics fled Arizona following passage of SB1070, even though Yuma has unemployment rates rivaling those of the great depression. Georgia passed a similar law, and now farmers are struggling to find migrant farm workers and now must decide which crops to leave rot. According to a recent study by the Cato institute, for every farm worker in the field, another 3.1 workers depending upon their work. Ironically the fast food industry is one of the sectors of our economy that is heavily dependent on undocumented immigrant workers, so we can’t help but wonder if Cain’s wealth from this industry was built on undocumented immigrant labor!

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Throughout U.S. history, whenever legal immigration has been unreasonably restricted, the result has been illegal immigration, first with Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century, then with Southern and Eastern Europeans during the 1920s, and today with unskilled undocumented workers, over 70 percent are from Latin America. Our last major immigration overhaul was in 1965, at a time that 50 percent of native adult Americans were high school dropouts, as compared to 6 percent today. Clearly, our demographics and needs have changed but our immigration system hasn’t. …