Quelle Surprise: No Illegal Immigrants = No Harvest

Georgia passed a "no-illegal-immigrants-in-our-state" law right before harvest. Illegal farm workers got the hint and took off. Now farmers are royally screwed as crops are not getting harvested.

Georgia, which passed an Arizona-style immigration bill in April that is due to take effect next month, has seen thousands of undocumented immigrants flee the state. A state survey released last week found 11,080 vacant positions on state farms that needed to be filled to avoid losing crops.

The solution? Not working out so well either:

For more than a week, the state’s probation officers have encouraged their unemployed offenders to consider taking field jobs. ... On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon, said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor’s farm. Mendez put the probationers to the test last Wednesday, assigning them to fill one truck and a Latino crew to a second truck. The Latinos picked six truckloads of cucumbers compared to one truckload and four bins for the probationers. "It's not going to work," Mendez said. "No way. If I'm going to depend on the probation people, I'm never going to get the crops up."

Gee... Remember when people warned against deporting all the illegal immigrants because they do the jobs that Americans won't do? Who could have guessed that they would be right?