Trib Reporter Shows His Bias

Ray Quintanilla is the narrator of a Chicago Tribune multimedia piece on the impact the shortage of illegal immigrants is having on farmers. In it he says, "...some of them are talking about this anti-immigrant mood and the problems it poses for them." I think he means anti-illegal-immigrant mood. What problems are posed to legal immigrants? Actually, what problems are posed to illegal immigrants? I guess the same problems posed to drug-dealers, theives and murderers: getting caught breaking the law.

Quintanilla is not only a reporter and narrator, but a spokesman for the illegals, proclaiming that "they all have one thing in common, they want to work." Really? Does that include the thousands, maybe millions, of Mexicans crossing our borders illegally to escape justice in Mexico for murder, serial killing, cop-killing, rape and pedophelia?

Even those who do come here "looking for work" the facts show that due to their low skills, illiteracy and large families to support, they often wind up in a life of crime.

Many police officials in states along the U.S.-Mexican border say they are fed up with the number of illegal aliens populating American prisons, many of
them incarcerated for violent crimes such as murder, rape and robbery.

But let the an illegal immigrant speak for himself:

Most Mexicans cross the border looking for work, but competition is fierce for jobs requiring uneducated, unskilled labor. Many illegal immigrants find themselves far from realizing their dreams.

"We come over here to find a better life," said inmate Tony Perez, a convicted drug dealer. "Not all of us are here to sell drugs or to do bad things, despite a few that do. But then again, doesn't everybody else from every other country?"

Continuing in his role as defender of illegals, Quintanilla repeats a falsehood we have heard too often, "These are jobs no one wants." Not according to the Census Bureau as analyzed by C.I.S.:

However, data collected by the Census Bureau show that, even prior to Hurricane Katrina, there were almost four million unemployed adult natives (age 18 to 64) with just a high school degree or less, and another 19 million not in the labor force. Perhaps most troubling, the share of these less-educated adult natives in the labor force has declined steadily since 2000.

Quintanilla next parrots the sob story of a farm owner, Betty Searles (ph), who exactly like the farmers profiled in the New York Times [see my analysis of that article here] simply expect prospective employees to come knocking on their door. I wonder what the applications might look like if they actually posted a want ad (and raised the wages to legal levels), instead of expecting new-hires to just come-a-knockin'.

At the beginning of the piece Quintanilla warns of raising produce prices as the illegal market dries up. I'd be more than willing to pay more for an apple if that's what it takes to enforce our laws. I'd like to see Quintanilla debate this with "living wage" advocates who insist increasing pay from illegal-below-minimum wage to $15-$17 per hour would only add a few cents to fruit and veggies.

But let's look at the actual numbers:

Even though strawberries are picked directly into the containers in which they are sold, and iceberg lettuce gets its film wrapper in the field, in 2000 farmers received an average 16 percent of the retail price of fresh fruits and 19 percent of the retail price of fresh vegetables, so $370 from the consumer means $65 to the farmer (0.16 x 187 = $30 + 0.19 x 175 = $35). This means that consumers who pay $1 for a pound of apples, or $1 for a head of lettuce, are giving 16 to 19 cents to the farmer and 5 to 6 cents to the farm worker. Link to USDA

Fresh fruit and vegetable producers do not pay all of this $65 to farm workers. Farm labor costs are typically a third or less of farmer revenue, meaning that farm worker wages and benefits represent about $22 per household a year. If farm wages were zero, the typical consumer unit would save $22 a year.

What would happen if the influx of immigrant workers were slowed, farm wages rose, and the increase in farm labor costs were passed through to consumers? In 1966, the fledgling United Farm Workers union won a 40 percent wage increase for table grape harvesters, largely because Bracero workers were not available. Average farm-worker earnings were $8.83 an hour for US field and livestock workers in 2005, according to a USDA survey of farm employers, and a 40 percent increase would raise them by $3.53 to $12.35. If this wage increase were passed fully to consumers, the 5 to 6 cent farm labor cost of a pound of apples or a head of lettuce would rise to 7 to 9 cents, and the retail price would rise by 2 to 3 cents.

For a typical household, a 40 percent increase in farm labor costs translates into a two to three percent increase in retail prices (0.175 x 0.33 = 6 percent, farm labor costs rise 40 percent, and 0.4 x 6 = 2.4 percent), so total spending on fruits and vegetables would rise by $9, from $370 a year to $379 a year. However, for a typical seasonal farm worker, earnings could rise from $8,800 for 1,000 hours of work to $12,350, or from below the federal poverty line for an individual, $9,570, to above it.
Farm wage increases in the past sometimes led to farm productivity improvements and lower rather than higher food prices for consumers.

If not Quintanilla, then perhaps the Trib can assign another reporter to do a narration (even using the same images) to balance this biased, inaccurate, unsourced reporting.