It's been this way here in more Northern Florida since the 90's. My late wife used to interview and photograph migrant farm workers out in the sticks. They were illegal as fuck. They reported being on a pretty much a set circuit according to the growing seasons. When I spent time in South Florida in the early 2000's I saw the other end of their circuit. Going north and south according to the crops.
I'm not an open border person, but the thing that's always stuck me about this is the obvious wink wink in this state. All the law and order rhetoric. And all the anti immigration rhetoric. And these people just stay unmolested. They never get deported. It's not hard to find them. It's easy. Figure out where the fields are. And I don't mean citrus. Hard to harvest stuff. Berries, tomatoes, mushrooms. Boom. You'll find their housing, Spanish churches, bodegas, restaurants. I'd go to these bodegas with my wife.
I remember people telling me on SW that Trump was driving the illegals out of Florida. Except for a few demonstrative high profile cases-- no. And I told them that and they called me a political shill and liar. I mean, what can I say. I got a new roof. My late wife went up the ladder and talked with the guys in Spanish. Most of the crew was illegal. Just drive around and look for roofs going up. Fuck. Just go to a Walmart closest to some of these fields. I still go to them if I have a weird hankering for Latin housewares. Fuck. In town some of the Publix stores have that.
The thing is, the need for labor ain't going away. And these illegals aren't going away. The most reasonable solution goes back to the 90's when we talked about creating an immigration class where these people could be normalized yet not made citizens. Like a retroactive visa. So they could be properly taxed, given services.
Which is really the issue. And bad things happen when we pretend these people don't exist and also don't want them to use services. Had a latina giving birth have her legs tied together by the EMT's and get dumped at the hospital. Lost her baby. People still defend that case. She shouldn't have given birth in the hospital. Definitely not in America. Good thing the baby died. One less demographic. Yea. Pro life.
What it really betrays is how anti labor we really are. It's fine to rely on labor perpetually held on limbo with no protections or benefits. Without really being human.
