Who’s helping the farmers?

I made a business trip to Yakima and went the back way across the Hanford Reach and saw many more crops waiting for harvest than usual. Driving through the orchards and grape vines, I was taken aback by the number of signs advertising for pickers and seasonal laborers.

Usually, these are filled by immigrant workers, but since the Trump crackdown, there are more and more “help needed” signs springing up across the agricultural areas. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and her Republican cronies keep saying that the immigrant laborers are taking the jobs away from American workers. My question for Cathy and her ilk is, “If the immigrants are taking jobs away from Americans, why aren’t the American workers flooding the area to fill the need for agricultural workers?”

Could it be that we really need a robust supply of immigrant workers to pick our crops, not because they are taking away the jobs, but because Americans won’t take those jobs? What is she doing to alleviate the situation and help those farmers before they go under because their crops can’t get harvested?

Ed Simpson

Spokane Valley