Farming industry lobbyists are praying for convicted felon President-Elect Trump to give their workforce a sweeping pass on the fat fuck’s promise of mass deportations given that as many as half of an estimated two million laborers in agriculture are undocumented, Reuters reports.
“We need the certainty, reliability and affordability of a workforce program and programs that are going to allow us to continue to deliver food from the farm to the table,” said John Hollay, director of government relations at the International Fresh Produce Association, a lobbying cartel. Hollay and others commenting for the Reuters and a similar Los Angeles Times story urged for the new Trump Reich to expand the H2-A via program that allows farms to hire seasonal foreign labor.
“Most farmers are realizing that they’re going to need to implement the H-2A program at some level to assure that they have labor,” said Steve Scaroni, founder of FreshHarvest, a recruiting firm for guest workers. “Because we just don’t know what the deportation is going to look like.”
Do they also have any fucking idea what the H-2A program is going to look like? Seriously, they’re counting on whatever office at INS that runs it still being there in six months when, at a moment’s notice, Stephen Miller could just get Trump to fire everyone who works on processing those visas, killing it off by default without having to bother with any legal or legislative work. This is how most of these lobbyists are comforting themselves. The LA Times describes California farmers, a pro-Trump demo, as similarly not “railing in protest” of the promised raids and roundups. “Many say they expect the president will support their workforce needs, either through a robust legalization program for workers already here or by leaving farms be and focusing enforcement elsewhere,” the Times writes.