Island Coffee farms looked at by ICE officials.

[EightFingers]

Used to have a lawn maintenance/landscaping business on the mainland years ago. After awhile I couldn't compete with the illegals. I kept a few customers for awhile but finally gave it up.

[terracore]

There is a program to legally bring migrant guest foreign workers to your farm for agricultural work:

https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-sta...al-workers

And there are laws that protect them from being abused:

https://www.dol.gov/whd/mspa/

My first job was as a strawberry picker, most of my co-workers worked on the farms under these programs.

[MarkD]

The guest worker program would be good. And perhaps also requiring unemployed food stamp recipients (and some other welfare recipients) to work on farms to receive their benefits.

For most folks other than hispanic farm workers, it seems, (no slight intended), working an 8-hour day on a farm is a near impossibility: too hot and too tiring. So work 2-4 hours a day. (Let’s be adaptable here.) Picking crops is piecemeal work; often paid for by the pound or box.

Yes farmers prefer full-time workers, but in a labor shortage you do what you can. So say 5-6 people working 2-4 hours a day. Or some similar arrangement. (And maybe some prison labor could be arranged.)

Too many people on government assistance laze around all day (some drinking or smoking weed). Like the group of 10-15 loungers hanging out every day on the grassy rise on the mauka side of the road just after Farmers Market in Hilo.

How about they contribute to society in a small way, even if it is just picking crops? No work, no food stamps.

[Guest]

Tulsi Gabbard recently spoke on the house floor about Mr Ortiz the Kona coffee grower and also Waimea resident Graham Ellis possible deportations.

http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2017/0...ortations/

Very Tough situation these two and many others face as they may be torn apart from their families when finally deported. It's also very hard for the many legal local folks who get turned away from working various labor jobs due to the work force they have to compete with from other countries.

[leilanidude]

There has been an "able bodied" work requirement for food stamps (EBT/SNAP) and general assistance benefits for a number of years. The Obama administration suspended the requirement during most of the recession but it is now back in force. Generally it means that in order to receive benefits, if one is deemed "able bodied" and has no small children to care for, they must work or volunteer a minimum of 20 hours per week.

What these farmers should do, is register their company into the program, which will allow the benefits office to funnel employees their way.

The program will even pay a portion of the wages back to the company as an incentive to give people a chance to be productive.

[loffelkopffl]

I thought the clown was only going to target the rapists, drug dealers and criminals

[leilanidude]

loffelkopffl - Both of these deportation actions were started during the Obama administration.

[MarkD]

Let's hope the "able bodied" requirement can be better implemented.

By the way, APOLOGIES TO ALL

for my prominent role in having the "alas Graham, we hardly knew ye" thread shut down (a seeming popular discussion).

I went on the thread ay 9:30 yesterday, then wrote a commentary for a time, and then posted without reading the intervening posts. Hence I did not see Rob's warning.

HOTPE, nice attempt at saving the discussion by throwing in the angle about the coqui frogs. AGAIN SORRY TO ALL

[PaulW]

What is it about "keeping it local" that you can't seem to grasp?
Apology accepted.

[MarkD]

No further comment. I have already been cautioned about questioning the established order.