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02/14/07 - A VA Reader Says That Immigration Hurts Women In Technology Professions

From: A Florida Reader

Yep, the Coalition of Immokalee Farm Workers (primarily illegal immigrants) has decided to take on McDonalds Corporation. Four years of boycotting Yum Brands (Taco Bell) resulted in a pay hike for the tomato pickers. They are hoping to do the same with McDonalds.

According to a Reuters report, Immokalee, a South Florida town,

"came to prominence in the 1990s by exposing a series of farm worker abuse and human trafficking cases."

(Of course the high numbers of illegal aliens residing there facilitated, and continues to facilitate, the coyotes smuggling illegals into the USA.)

"On April 13, the coalition will stage demonstrations outside McDonald's corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. A day later it will lead a march through downtown Chicago, culminating in a rally under the 'Golden Arches' at McDonald's flagship restaurant in the Windy City.  'A lot of people are organizing this,' said Gerardo Reyes, a 29-year-old native of Zacatecas, Mexico. – 'It's going to be a very big crowd.'" [Florida farmworkers take aim at McDonald's, By Tom Brown, Reuters, February 15, 2007]

(Who knows maybe they'll all march over to Chicago and say "hello" to Elvira Arellano—the illegal alien and identity thief who has been hiding inside a Chicago church for more than 6 months while her young son travels around the US and Mexico as a pawn of pro-illegal immigrant and open borders activists. Let's hope that ICE is nearby and escorts many of the demonstrators back home to Mexico, Guatemala, etc.)

"Largely working on small individually owned farms, tomato pickers are currently paid about 45 cents for every 32-pound (14.5 kg) bucket of the fruit they pick, with no rights to overtime pay or any other job benefits."

(Overtime pay is the farm owners concern not McDonalds. And obviously these demonstrators are forgetting about the FREE TAXPAYER PAID BENEFITS of healthcare, food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, schooling and free school lunches that they and/or their dependents receive.)

"At the current wage rate, a worker has to pick nearly 2 tons of tomatoes daily to make $50 — or harvest 181 pounds to be able to afford a 'Big Mac' sandwich at a Miami McDonald's. The coalition says a reasonable worker can pick about 2 tons of tomatoes on a good day."

(So let's see: if their estimates are correct, 2 tons per day = $50 X 5 days = $250.00 which would be barely less than the current Florida minimum wage of $6.67/hrX40= $266.80.)

So maybe they do have a concern… until you look at "A study commissioned by McDonald's last year found that Florida's tomato pickers earned a wage of up $18.27 per hour at one grower's Florida farm."  Reuters reports the pickers are disputing this claim as false —"The study has been widely criticized as inaccurate in a state where median farmworker income was $7.26 per hour in 2005."  Of course then what they are inadvertently saying is that Florida  pickers actually earn about $7.26 per hour which is clearly above the minimum wage!

So then why are they protesting and complaining?

I suspect that this is just another attempt to continue to exploit the "sob story" template about the "poor, mistreated illegal aliens".  No doubt the national media will give all sorts of TV coverage to the whining pickers and their pals marching through the streets of Chicago—portraying them as the poor "little guy" against the greedy tight-fisted fast food mega-giant—a real David and Goliath story.

George W. Bush's mantra that "they are doing jobs Americans won't do" will be repeatedly spouted —who knows, maybe even Elvira will finally come out of the Church to join them.

Let's hope that someone really does invite ICE.