The reality though is very different. The jobs that are seasonal, tough, and do not pay well. Literaly the way nature works requires a transient workforce to harvest produce.
We need to accept that many farms are reliant on cheap migrant labour and that this needs accommodating.
We're putting our ability to feed ourselves as a country at risk.
Another alternative is buying the food from the market, from other countries, until the prize is lower than the price covering the costs for the farms to use legal workers.
Illegal immigration, especially in America, is modern day slavery that has been co-opted by the left for their own political gain.
I've never understood this line of reasoning.
Given the crucial nature of food, I would expect that were illegal immigrants to leave the picture, the agriculture system would adapt by some combination of (a) higher wages and (b) more automation.
Presumably this would lead to food becoming more expensive (at least until automation improved), but I doubt we'd see famine.
> The jobs that are seasonal, tough, and do not pay well.
When I was a kid, kids on summer vacation did exactly this kind of work.
A significant hike in UK grown food costs, would just lead to more being imported, unless of course you start going down the line of more import tariffs which is of course possible but tends to have other consequences in terms of things like trade wars and reciprocal tariffs on UK produced goods.
Of course you could eschew tariff protection and allow food production to move to other countries, but that in itself has potentially serious consequences as a trade war or some kind of event which disrupts supply from those other countries could endanger the food security of your country...
What do you mean? In times of war, foreign imports would stop?
For reference, the US presently has a surplus of food. It exports more than it imports.
You're having a conversation about immigration, in a thread that talked explicitly about illegal immigration. But you decide to conflate the two, and start talking about "immigrants" without specifying whether you're talking about illegal or legal ones.
In my opinion, this lowers the level of conversation, regardless of your political views. Please, don't do that.
they don't need it per se but sure helps the bottom line