Immigration raids are not only taking workers, but causing others workers not to show up out of fear.


"This is like a time bomb just ready to go off," Luawanna Hallstrom, Labor-Chair, California Farm Bureau.

Some of us spoke about this a few years ago. Others said that it wouldn't affect prices that much. Econ 101 says it will.

Maybe this is true (and it probably is) but if there weren't any immigration raids, there's still be an excuse for food prices to rise.

Maybe the fault lies not with the raids, but with the people that hired them in the first place, if they are illegals. If they are legals, they shouldn't fear deportation, and if they are illegals.....

Honi, basic economics shows that rising labor costs will increase retail costs. Consider not only illegals picking the harvest, but also illegals transporting the harvest, and illegals unloading the product in the back of your local store. Remove them, and you increase labor costs at each link in the chain from the field to your store.

I used this Voice of America 'Special English' article in class today. Apparently, high food prices are also influenced by factors such as the US government's support for ethanol (which there's too much of) and rising prosperity in China.