COMMENTARY Dubious plans like more teenage work hours can't replace the undocumented labor that keeps much of our economy going. So let's find smart ways to admit more documented migrants.
When I was a teenager in Indiana, the big summer job was detasseling corn.
We’d trudge up and down rows of stalks and their razor-sharp leaves, yanking one pollen flower after another. Only agronomists seemed to know the purpose of it. Still, it was a Hoosier rite of passage.
Since then, kids have learned something important about detasseling corn: it sucks.
That’s why today, 80% of the work is done by machines.
But detasseling is an agro-task machines can actually do. Most field work, especially harvesting fruits and vegetables, still requires manual labor.
Now, ask South Florida teenagers if they’d be up for the backbreaking toil of picking tomatoes and mangoes in the Redland during their summer vacation.
Ain’t happenin’. Many of them today would file angry complaints with the National Labor Relations Board if their parents so much as suggested they mow the lawn.
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So I'll admit I chuckled when I heard Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ rationale for wanting to loosen the state’s child labor laws.
He thinks it will somehow reduce the need to hire the undocumented workers who so often do essential jobs that documented workers — kids or adults — won’t touch with a 10-foot-long avocado pole.
“Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally,” DeSantis mused last week, “when, you know, teenagers … should be able to do this stuff.”
Because, Governor, if we relied on U.S. adolescents to do this stuff, the ensuing labor shortfall would send the price of strawberries, poultry, hotel stays, home building or home elder care higher than a Trump tariff on Canadian bacon.
In Florida there are only 53 available workers for every 100 open jobs. So ask teenagers if they want to pick tomatoes in the Redland. Sorry, it ain't happenin'.
I’m not making some woke declaration that undocumented labor is a good thing. Quite the contrary:
I’m saying DeSantis, President Trump and MAGA nativists should try brainstorming reasonable ways to document undocumented labor instead of scoring easy political points by demonizing it — or by concocting dubious plans for replacing it.
The reason is simple: labor market data confirm we’re facing a steep workforce deficit in this country.
That’s especially true in Florida, where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says there are only 53 available workers for every 100 open jobs, particularly in sectors undocumented (and taxpaying) workers help keep afloat, like agriculture, construction and hospitality.
Blue-collar migrants
Trump’s proposing more of what he calls “Gold Card” visas to lure rich immigrants to the U.S. I'd say let’s also propose more of what I’ll call “Golden Corral” visas (my shout-out to the popular, affordably-priced restaurant chain) so we can legally bring in all the blue-collar migrants we’re going to need as boomers keep retiring and birthrates keep falling.
We do have Golden Corral visas on the books, like the H-2 program that brings workers in on a usually temporary, seasonal basis.
But we need to increase them — it’s estimated we hand out only a quarter of the H2's we really require, and the red tape is onerous — and we need to gear more of them toward what those Gold Card visa recipients get: an eventual path to legal residency.
That’s the conclusion of even conservative immigration experts like David Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute think tank in Washington D.C.
When I spoke with Bier recently about our chaotic patchwork of temporary legal immigration avenues — an ad hoc substitute for Congress’ unconscionable failure to pursue real immigration reform — he said the U.S. can no longer afford to keep its blue-collar migrant workforce so inordinately undocumented.
“If you tell people there’s no way to come legally, the message is sent that the only way to come is illegally,” Bier told me.
“We should instead focus on fixing the legal immigration system,” he said — starting with “an improved worker visa system, especially year-round visas for jobs that don’t require college degrees.”
That, Bier added, would help create “an immigration system that’s workable for the 21st century” and the labor shortage we’re confronting.
If it’s too recklessly fashionable on the left to say, “Let’s let everybody in,” it’s too spitefully trendy on the right to say, “Don’t let anybody in.” Neither approach does us any good.
What would benefit us is a more realistic system of documented migrant labor.
That and maybe persuading teenagers to mow the lawn once in a while.
