Georgia Heading for Govt.-Made Disaster?

Ran into a person from Georgia yesterday who painted not not-pretty picture of what is going on in that state. "It looked crazy," he said of one news report, which showed "cucumbers yellow for as far as you can see." They were rotting on the vine, that farmer losing $80,000 in cucumbers, alone, and the cucumbers were just one of his crops. (Most likely, the other crops were not ready for harvest.)

And, why the loss? What brought it on? A little law called HB87, which hasn't even gone into effect yet. It calls for police to detain and question folks who might be in the U.S. without proper paperwork. "Just the thought of being arrested -- a lot of people are scared," my friend from Georgia said.

Georgia is one of the few states that has passed harsh laws against undocumented immigrants this past year. Yesterday, a judge blocked provisions of the law that call for police to question folks about their immigration status. Other portions of the law, including one saying many businesses must use E-Verify, remained intact.

What's going on in Georgia isn't getting much play in Utah, but the loss of the crops is significant. Georgia uses more illegal migrant labor than most any state, if not the most, and for that state to have passed a laws cutting into the workforce there, is significant in and of itself.

I don't know how bad the crop loss is (or will be), because I neither live there nor have read much of the news, but I know there is much concern in Georgia.

They might have as much of a shortage of farm workers as 11,000.

When the Georgia legislature passed the law, "They didn't for see that the crops would be damaged," my friend said. "It's ridiculous." He said those steering clear of coming to Georgia include legal migrants who simply do not want to be harassed.

The story of the shortage of farm labor "has taken over the news" in Georgia, my friend said. How serious is it? Will enough crops being lost to call it a disaster? If so, it will be a government-created disaster.

The judge's decision follows similar decisions after similar laws in Arizona, and Utah. While many hail the judge's ruling, it did not come fast enough to save some of Georgia's crops. The bulk, though, I'm sure are still to be harvested, so we will now see if the migrants will come in now that the judge has lifted their fear of being stopped and questioned so easily.