Maybe if we could pay citizens fair market price for their labor we wouldn't have to rely on illegal immigrants.
I grew up in the Imperial Valley, California and graduated from CUHS the year after the recession hit.
At the time I had no prospects, I wasn’t a software developer, I didn’t have the grades or money for college outside IVC and neither did many of my classmates.
No fewer than 7-10 people my age, my class, were working the fields nearby the winter after graduation, all US citizens most at least 2nd generation, 2-3 pochos that couldn’t even speak Spanish.
It wasn’t good money, but it was money that was available without having leave/stop helping your family and move to San Diego and pay San Diego rent, food, transport, and moving prices for some shitty job at a Cici’s Pizza while living in a 2 bed/1 bathroom apartment with 4 other people and trying to catch classes at grossmont, city, Mesa etc simultaneously.
Many people would take that opportunity, you just don’t know any of us.
It’s not like labor is 100% of the cost of produce. There’s seed, fertilizer, packaging, transport. I’d be surprised if labor was even 25% of the wholesale cost. Yes it’d be more expensive but I don’t think it’d be prohibitively so.