#700: Revisiting Baltimore Lettuce-Pickers

It's been a couple years since Baltimore was a riot-fest, with the aftermath of the Freddie Gray incident turning, as most things with the left, into chaos in the streets, destruction and looting for no productive reason and no real end other than carting away whatever can be carted off.  And burning things down, let's not forget that.

I had an idea at the time, trying to address the jobs issue and the immigration issue all at the same time, as published here.  You see, the leftists were falling all over themselves trying not to dump on the rioters for what they actually were -- scum.  In fact, in hindsight it was curious that they wouldn't call the rioters bad people, any more than they would call Islamist terrorists "Islamist terrorists."  They rush to defend both, which must provide definition to their character flaw.

At the same time the arsonists and looters were destroying their section of the city, and being rationalized by the left for some kind of frustration because there were no jobs (well, you burn down the places of business, you're kind of not helping the jobs issue), the immigration debate was rampant.

The Washington Post provided us some amusement by critiquing the immigration and deportation plan of some of the Republican candidates.  We would have real problems in California, the paper went on, because if we deport illegals we won't have any vegetables.  Americans -- and I quote here -- "don't want to do the jobs that [illegals] do."

I couldn't reconcile all that with the numbers.  There are indeed jobs, plenty of them.  Six million, I think the Administration has been saying.  Add to that all the under-the-table, cash-paid jobs the illegals are doing in the lettuce fields in California and the fruit groves and the like, and you've got hundreds of thousands more.

I pointed out that if the rioters in Baltimore were indeed complaining about a lack of jobs, they had only to go out to the vegetable fields and show their citizenship.  There is plenty of lettuce, and not a lot of USA citizens are out there a-pickin'.  I don't know what the pay is, but it sure beats sitting on the stoop complaining about the blahs and the miseries and the lack of jobs.

It is now a couple years since, and Donald Trump is the President of the United States.  On perusing the old article, I realized that I didn't expect him to get the nomination back then, let alone to win the White House.  And the old article rang a little differently with a businessman in the Oval Office, so I thought about it.

Donald Trump has been president for six months, and this is the sort of thing that should pique his interest.  We have two problems -- joblessness in the inner cities, and illegal immigration prompted by the opportunity to work cash jobs in the lettuce fields.  It would be just like the new president to look at the two of them and put someone in charge of creating a program where inner-city unemployed in Chicago, or Baltimore, or wherever, could be set up to do the jobs -- with Social Security numbers, of course, so some of the growers may not be fans, but the law is the law -- hopping a train out to the west coast, or whatever makes sense, and having the job they say they want.

I think he would find that a curious focus for some creative thinking.  I sure hope that, whatever is logistically possible, he turns someone in his administration on to look at how those paired problems could be resolved.

Of course, the Democrats wouldn't even think it was a problem.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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