Obviously the report my Center published Monday (see it here, and my piece on it at the homepage here) wasn’t the reason Sen. Feinstein cancelled her plans – the same day! – to append the AgJOBS amnesty to the farm bill, but the lobbyists at the cheap-labor trough sure didn’t like it; the flacks for the nurserymen and landscapers took the lead, with not one but two denunciations of it (here and here).
What’s interesting is that their final, fallback argument is always the same – the fantasy of mercantilism and autarky. Unlike some, I don’t worship free trade as a religious principle, but trade does usually increase national wealth and national power. But in arguing for their cheap-labor subsidy, the farm interests warn of “food security” and put the issue this way: “The real questions are: Is it in the U.S. national interest to become dependent on foreign sources for food and fiber, which are, after all, very basic commodities?” The New York Times played its part by highlighting an American lettuce farmer who now also farms some land in Mexico as an ominous sign of things to come. Feinstein shoveled the same nonsense about offshoring, saying that without AgJOBS,
we will continue to see labor shortages far into the future. Fruit will rot. Crops will go unharvested. Operations will be forced to cut back or move to Mexico.
The notion of becoming “dependent” on scary foreign vegetable suppliers is absurd – to begin with, only one percent of our lettuce (which is what the NYT piece was about) is imported. Besides that, why is it bad to import a somewhat larger portion of fruits and vegetables than we do now? Food-safety concerns are legitimate, of course, so hire more USDA inspectors and charge the cost to the importers. But the idea that our security is somehow compromised because winter tomatoes, say, might come from Mexico instead of Florida is tendentious nonsense.