In our discussion of forces behind America’s current worker shortage, regular commenter “O” noted that one contributing factor is “the nativist anti-immigrant fervor that resulted in fewer people allowed into the US to work.” Senator John Thune appears to agree—yesterday, our senior Senator introduced a bill to bring more foreigners to America on H-2B visas to work seasonal jobs in forestry and tourism:
The new “H-2C” (conservation) program created by Thune’s bill would be nested within the H-2B program, but exempted from the annual cap of 66,000 visas, for a period of five years. This would simultaneously relieve demand from the oversubscribed H-2B program, which provides a vital, seasonal workforce during South Dakota’s peak tourism months and for construction and landscaping. H-2C activities would be limited to orchard work and seed collection, tree planting, nursery care, forest and vegetation management, wildfire mitigation and brush clearing, timber stand improvement, and other activities with a direct forest health or conservation nexus, such as fish and wildlife habitat or watershed protection.
According to the Forestry Resources Association, there is an approximately three-to-five year backlog in replanting trees to restore forests that have been damaged by wildfire, hurricanes, and delays caused by the pandemic throughout the United States. Nearly 10,000 H-2B forestry workers plant approximately 1.6 billion trees each year, contributing to 85 percent of trees planted annually in the United States (8-9 percent of this acreage is on federal land). These seasonal jobs represent only 1 percent of the total forestry sector, supporting 1.1 million domestic, higher-skilled and higher-paying jobs in the forestry, wood, and paper industries. H-2B workers mostly plant trees following disturbances such as fires, hurricanes, and timber harvests. Tree planting jobs have proven difficult to fill using domestic labor because the jobs are seasonal and change locations frequently, often traveling from state to state.
Under Thune’s bill, H-2C visas could not be used for jobs related to landscaping, recreation, or tourism, although the program would reduce demand for the annual H-2B cap via the exemption. Participating H-2C employers would have to follow the existing requirements for H-2B [Senator John Thune, press release, 2021.06.24].
I would enjoy spending my work day out in the forest… or in a future forest that I help create with my own hands. But how many of us want to give up stable family and community life to travel the country living in campgrounds and motels for a hard gig that only lasts six months? (Hmmm… sounds like work all those tax-dodging RVers who fabricate residency in South Dakota might enjoy doing….) In acknowledging that such itinerant and temporary jobs are hard to fill, Senator Thune supports our O’s statement that our workforce shortage is also tied to the fact that “the US creates too many crappy jobs.”
Senator Thune has been soft on immigration all along when it comes to South Dakota workforce issues. In March he floated another H-2B visa plan to bring more foreign workers to South Dakota and other low-unemployment states. He proposed the same plan back in 2019. And while he doesn’t seem to have done much about it, Senator Thune regularly regularly hears from big business and the CAFO lobby who want more foreign workers to exploit in their meat and milk sweatshops.
Indeed, the US creates too many crappy jobs and provides no worker security for when those jobs peter out, or are seasonal, or lack child care or elder care benefits, etc. Then we wonder why there’s “nobody” willing to work those low-wage, no-benefit jobs. Create a better social safety net? Nah—time to bring in more cheap, exploitable labor.
We do love free labor in this country. You might say we were founded on it—though don’t tell Kristi! She’ll get the vapors about “critical race theory.”
Yep, let’s just continue supporting an system that needs serious reform by continuing to exploit foreign workers. This is how we are destroying ourselves. Worker exploitation helps no one in the long run.
Not a bad idea, I could back it rather than crying for more immigrant help to make beds and clean toilets in tourist businesses instead of paying higher wages.
I would rather see him, or better yet a Democrat, advocate a new infrastructure program designed with 18 to 22 yr. old Americans of both sexes giving 2 years of public service to their country; receiving back college benefits, etc. similar to those enlisting in military service. In lieu of registration for the draft. Many areas are needed: forestry, sanitation, recycling, medical,-the list would grow and grow.
Giving something of our selves for a period of time to the good of our country would benefit the individual’s self-worth and also the country immensely.
Reforming our economic system begins with educating more young people about starting cooperative businesses, that do not operate on the “maximizing profit” principle that other types of businesses are based on. That’s why some other types of businesses like and depend on exploiting workers from other countries: it “maximizes their profits”. Co-ops are member-owned businesses looking out for their communities as one of their guiding principles, along with offering living-wages for their employees.
Well if your going to exploit someone, its those darn Canadians.
Thune is also soft on backing Capitol Police funding despite the Republican terrorists 1.6 raid on our Capitol.
“The office of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) told Republicans to get moving because the Capitol Police are running out of money, “Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Monday called on Senate Republicans to join bipartisan negotiations on the Security Supplemental to address the fallout from the January 6 insurrection. It has been 166 days since the January 6 attack and 32 days since the House passed an emergency supplemental. Without Senate action, the Capitol Police will run out of funding sometime in August. And without Senate action, the National Guard, which provided protection to the Capitol after the attack of January 6, will have to begin cutting training in August.”
***
“The Senate’s No. 2 GOP leader John Thune confirmed the Senate will…https://www.newsweek.com/gop-sen-john-thune-confirms-senate-will-take-2-week-recess-without-deal-policing-bill-1603857
…on revamping policing practices and holding officers accountable over misconduct. President Joe Biden initially set a deadline for lawmakers on May 25, the date when George Floyd, who is Black, died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin put a knee to his neck in 2020.”
“It’s just nailing down the final details, and there are a couple of red lines for our guys,” Thune told reporters about the stalling of reaching a deal.
Republicans keep talking about how much they love the police, but their actions tell a different story.
***
For context of Thune’s warbling on “blue” lives matter and despite the Senate’s unanimous failure to hold 911-style investigation of the Republican terrorism assault on Thune’s “Minority Whip” office suite (https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-senators-resist-jan-6-commission-similar-9-11-bill-2021-5?op=1), see:
*** “In the glare of last summer’s spotlight, Seattle police did not rise to the occasion, but rather reverted to the level of their training, exposing their institutional raison d’être by responding to criticism the only way they know how.
After Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd on May 25, 2020, mass protests of police violence broke out in Seattle on May 30, 2020 — a widely documented public funeral both serious and surreal, with incinerated police vehicles and looted cheesecakes punctuating charged speeches and emotional marches. Since then, Seattle police have sustained tens of thousands of formal complaints of misconduct and unprofessional behavior, much of it ironically stemming from actions they took at protests of police misconduct and unprofessional behavior. The Seattle Police Department is a defendant in not one, but two, class action lawsuits for targeting journalists, medics, legal observers and demonstrators at the protests. Four of every 10 Seattle Police Department employees ended 2020 with a grievance at the Seattle Office of Police Accountability. [note the subversive 6/3 Republican SCOTUS just clamped down on class action lawsuits https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/is-it-a-3-3-3-supreme-court-barrett-opinion-gives-goldman-sachs-partial-win-in-class-action-case%5D
The spark of civil unrest was lit in the powder keg of a presidential election year, and some members of the Seattle police force did their best to keep the desperate last embers of the Trump administration alive. At least six Seattle cops participated in the seditious “Stop The Steal” rally that fueled the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — the largest delegation of any municipal police department in the country.
In the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Seattle Police Officers Guild President Michael Solan equated the attempted neo-Confederate coup with Black Lives Matter protests, portraying police as the thin blue line between two sides of extremists. In a rare episode of unanimous civic agreement, all 11 of Seattle’s elected officials condemned Solan’s remarks. In March 2021, the city’s Office of Civil Rights referred to racism in the ranks of Seattle police as “cyanide in the drink” of progressive Seattle.
[T]he case made by abolitionists in Seattle is ….[y]ears of racist policing rained criminalization and pain on the city’s most vulnerable communities, segregated and economically redlined as they were. To correct disparities that have been decades in the making, the argument goes, the Seattle Police Department must be defunded by at least half, with the resulting funds reinvested in social housing, child care and other civic amenities whose budgets are regularly dwarfed by the hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year on police.”
Now RC’s mayor and life long police head Steve Allender us directly advising President Biden on police violence and gun regulation. Thune and Noem are more gun “fetishizisers” than responsible politicians. Noem openly questions Biden’s legitimacy! Thune is in lock/step with McConnell’s strident gun fetish.
Above link:
https://www.politicususa.com/2021/06/21/senate-republicans-defund-capitol-police.html
But NOT Thune, “one of McConnell’s lieutenants, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), explained candidly last week that an inquest would get in the way of the GOP’s campaign message for 2022.
“A lot of our members … want to be moving forward and not looking backward,” he said. “Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections, I think, is a day lost on being able to draw a contrast between us and the Democrats’ very radical left-wing agenda.”
Thune calls DEFUND POLICE “outlandish”. Hard for this South Dakota boy to understand reallocation of funds to underfunded social services. He “understands” outlandish July 4th visits to Moscow subtleties though! He like NUCLEAR bombers low flying in full afterburner over neighborhoods. Assaulting Mt Rushmore in state of the art military attack planes and jets. For Trump fireworks rallies. Ten years ago “Senator Thune’s amendment would allow anyone who has a permit to carry concealed firearms in any one state to bring those concealed firearms into 47 other states, even if that person cannot legally possess a gun in the state they are entering.” https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senators-new-jersey-governor-denounce-dangerous-amendment-that-would-put-communities-at-risk-for-more-gun-violence
https://kool98.com/news/236632-thune-calls-defunding-police-departments-an-outlandish-idea/
On Trump’s signature migrant ban in all its forms, Thune now wants more green cards for tourist workers.
Whether it is divisive immigration, divisive police reform stalling, divisive domestic terrorism investigation stalling against his Republican constituents, Thune is a leader of the worst kind with the largest war chest.
Seattle link:
https://crosscut.com/opinion/2021/05/seattle-police-had-chance-prove-abolitionists-wrong-they-didnt
(Cont.) https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-05-23/kevin-mccarthy-and-mitch-mcconnell-want-voters-to-forget-the-jan-6-riot
Such visas (rather than green cards, sorry) might allow for workers to replant the national forest after Thune’s next fascist leader of the Republican Party burns it down while slouched as a lounge-lizard addresses ebullient or fat drunken red necks on the Mt Rushmore stage with fireworks over a drought parched western state:)
Well, goodness, We have work to do…Hurry, someone!! Find a Honduran to do it.
Vote little Johnny out?
Will people receive preference if they bring their own rake?
Let’s replace Thune with someone more Trump-like.
“tax-dodging RVers who fabricate residency in South Dakota”
Cory – you are wrong about a lot, but not regarding these electoral warriors that come into the state, vote, then leave.
I was told yesterday that information systems should not allow just anybody to post anything.
Yet, there are some down-low information systems now coordinating violence, carnage, burning, looting, and vote fraud on a massive scale that are not hosted by FaceBook or PlainsTribune.com
We have to come together and find a better way.
Thanks for letting me post here .. I promise to always try to add something of value in addition to diatribes and lame witticisms.
That goes for everywhere I post.
Well…let me expand my thinking here…If Senator Thune were to include a pathway to citizenship with these five year visas, and if the people eligible for these visas were the adults seeking asylum and currently locked up at the border, his proposal may have merit. The people in question are Hondurans and Guatamalans, who are largely Mayans and other native people, many from the highlands. These people are devoted family men, are mostly Christian (Catholic with a number of Evangelicals) and hard working, agriculturalists. They have proven to be a dedicated workforce and would make excellent citizens. If Senator Thune’s proposal would offer a pathway to citizenship, a decent wage, and civilized living conditions, it may be an acceptable solution for these oppressed people seeking asylum. What is he waiting for???
I bet we could deploy drones to plant trees. Send in aerial drones to map the area and identify the locations for new trees and the passable routes to them. Then send in Mars rovers programmed with those coordinates and equipped with digging arms, sapling trays, and maybe a tank of organic fertilizer to do the planting.
John, replacing Thune with someone more like the last guy in the White House will not produce better policy solutions or reduce violence.
Arlo and Senator Thune get me thinking about a more comprehensive solution. If we can’t view all those folks coming to the border but trapped on the other side due to our processing backlog as fellow human beings requiring a moral response, perhaps we can look at them as workforce requiring an economic response. Supposedly all those people at the border constitute a “crisis”—well, let’s let the free market clear that crisis. Let Thune’s friends in the tourism, forestry, dairy, and other industries send hiring reps and foremen down to Reynosa, Matamoros, and the other border camps…just like the employers already go to American street corners where dayworkers gather each day to be hired for spot jobs. The forestry rep gathers a crowd in the camp, asks, “Who wants to plant trees for six months?” and, to the people who raise their hands, hands out signed contracts and pre-approved visas. The forestry rep puts those volunteers and their families on a company bus, takes them right across the border through the customs fast lane, transports each family to housing and each worker to the job site. We clear the border backlog, relive the safety and sanitary hazards of the camps, resolve our workforce issues, and increase GDP and tax revenues, all via the free market, with the only federal spending coming from the cost of printing those work visas (which the hiring industries could cover with nominal application fees.=).
“If we can’t view all those folks coming to the border but trapped on the other side due to our processing backlog as fellow human beings requiring a moral response”
The strongest argument that I’ve heard is that by having a less compassionate stance on those at the border now, we disincentivize future groups from coming.
At the same time, someone has to step-into the mess in South/Central America and help make it safe and secure. If we could get out of the Middle East and re-devote those resources Southward, I think we could take a two pronged approach to restoring security and national pride Southward, and disincentivize more from coming.
I would love to take a trip to Central America and visit, understand the culture, enjoy the food, and marvel at the land and sea scapes, but the security situation down there is tenuous.
Without security, the tough love at the border will be for naught.
Shower thought: should small business owners cook their own food and hammer their own shingles or find a new occupation?
Bringing in workforce belies the reality that the Singularity is near. I can’t shake the notion that this is human trafficking. So, SD should be spending a LOT of money on robotics and software education in my view.
Well, John Dale, Look at Cuba for example, the right wing with all the money got tossed out in the late 50s. They moved to Miami. The United States should have wooed Castro, but Moscow did better. What exactly do you want in Central America? More Communism? More Ortegas? Who will set up a proper voting system? Once somebody wins an election, throughout the world they rig the system. Look at Turkey, eastern Europe. Even in America the pubs are trying to set up a system that allows the minority party, themselves to win. Unless you have a long history of Democracy its hard for the other side to peacefully give up power after a vote. Republicans have realized that if more people exercise their right to vote, they lose. Rather than change any of their views or attempt to sell people a bill of goods they have found it easier to just cheat. In the long run they will lose, but for now they have his worshipfullness and nothing else. Its so sad.
Co-ops are great!
Also, we can create Social Businesses that just creates jobs and pays back Founders money only. A guy lends $1000 to Social Business, social business pays him back out of profits, say, $100 a month. No profits to shareholders, no dividends, just great wages and great jobs!
Social business could be set up for ag, forestry projects, also any retail or manufacturing business. Wages only. Owner does not get profits, he just gets paid back whatever he loaned the business when it started.
Think the impossible! It happens only when you start now.