Farm workers claim US work visa holders are essential
July 08 2010 by Liam Clifford
The US United Farm Workers Union is launching a campaign to illustrate the importance of US work visa holders in the farming industry.
Following an increase in
anti-immigrant rhetoric, the Farm Workers Union says that accusing migrants of
stealing US jobs is without basis. In fact, they claim that Americans won’t take
the labour-intensive, low paid jobs themselves and that US work visas holders
are essential for the industry.
The new “Take Our Jobs” campaign is
intended to point out that "Farm workers do the work that most Americans are not
willing to do," according to the union’s president Arturo Rodriguez. In order to
replace the immigrants working on US farms, half a million Americans would have
to sign up for the work. In order to illustrate that this is unlikely to happen,
the union has posted an online application system for American
workers.
The website has been open since 24 June and so far, "Only a few
dozen have really followed through with the process,” added
Rodriguez.
According to statistics, 85 per cent of farm workers in the US
are immigrants and 75 per cent of these are unregistered. This is the kind of
issue that President Obama is keen to deal with through his US immigration reform, which would give such workers are route to citizenship.
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