Shot in the foot.

Just in time for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays the harvest begins next month for much of the nation's winter vegetable crops. The big question is, who will be doing the job of getting the food from the fields to the Thanksgiving and Christmas tables? Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff with his wonderful sense of timing has decided to send letters to 140,000 employers informing them that they have people on their payrolls with incorrect Social Security numbers and that they will be heavily fined if they don’t fire them. Nice going Mr. Chertoff . Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot as a tribute to truth, justice , and the American way. There are already crops starting to rot in the fields because there is not enough farm labor to pick them and you want to either deport the undocumented Mexican farm workers or scare them even further underground.

Arizona is already waking up to the fact that they may have made a grave error with their tough new employer sanctions law. Where are they going to get workers to replace the 30,000 that they need every day to pick winter vegetable crops? What will all this mean to the average American? It is bound to mean shortages and higher prices. This is seasonal work in remote rural locations and there is no way that they are going to find American workers to fill the empty slots. I think that George Bush already knows that he is potentially in big trouble because of this and when the American housewives finally begin to clamor for their veggies he will find himself in a big pickle…er, ummm, no pun intended :)