Georgian Immigration Law affecting Farmers!

Law Blinders: Certain fragments of the new immigration law in Georgia that came into effect on Friday was partially blocked by a District Court. Officials see illegal immigration as the biggest threat to the US, yet the policies made huge blinders and didn’t consider such implications all thanks to the legislations and constituencies.

HB 87: The law is named as HB 87 that has made it compulsory for all those farm owners who have more than ten employees to use the Federal Government’s online verification system to check for the legitimacy of the immigration status of the worker. It also lets the police question the suspected illegal immigrants. They can even penalize farm owners who hire such immigrants even after knowing their illegal status.

Adverse Effect: The farmers are the ones who are most affected and have already started feeling the adverse effect of the newly drafted law. Dreaded by raids and crackdowns, a huge number of Latino farm workers have already started staying away. A farmer who owns a blueberry farm frets about the fruit that will be lost unpicked and would cost him very dearly. He is already worried about his 600 acres of grapes that will ripe in August.

Losses To Businesses: It is evident that there will be huge losses in revenue at farms and other business that depend on cheaply available labor. As a whole the Georgian as well as other economies that have gotten tough against undocumented immigration will suffer. Such kinds of policies will directly impact lives of ordinary citizens who have always been haunted by the increasing immigrant population just to wait for a better final decision.

Labor Loss: Such stringent laws will surely lead to labor loss; however Nathan Deal, Governor of Georgia begs to differ. He simply doesn’t worry about the losing immigrant labor. He suggests for the ex-convicts to fill the jobs vacated by Latino workers. A 6th generation farmer Gary Paulk told Time, “I wish my life to be as safe as the Governor’s. Let those workers be cooks to such officials and I’ll hire them on my farm.”

Economic Implications: The local growers of Georgia believe that the Governor and the policymakers should have had a broader outlook instead of just sticking to discourage undocumented immigration. All would have been in a better position had the economic implications been taken into consideration. There were no economic precautions were taken against such measures. They believe that the Federal Government would have done better had they been given the task to deal with the situation solely.