‘No amnesty.’ That’s what they keep saying, anyhow.
Just to be clear:
No amnesty, no sir, no how.
That’s Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins after President Trump bopped into the Iowa State Fairgrounds to say this about undocumented ag workers:
“If a farmer’s willing to vouch for these people, in some way, Kristi, I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?”
That would be Kristi Noem, homeland security chief in the flak jacket and bling and MAGA cap over there.
The right-wing blather machine screeched. Trump had acknowledged that we need immigrant labor to pick lettuce, milk cows and cut meat. Agribusiness had been pestering the White House over threatening their workforce, and you know how that goes. Grease the squeak.
Rollins took to the lectern to articulate what nearly everyone is thinking: There are plenty of people on Medicaid who could do stoop labor or hack at hogs.
There’s a reason grandma in the nursing home draws Medicaid. She ain’t worth a damn for throwing turkeys off a truck. Nearly all the parents of kids on Hawk-I insurance are employed — it’s just that ag-related work pays chicken feed, even by rural Iowa standards, such that you need subsidized insurance. The people tending your cows can barely afford milk.
Trump hints waivers. Rollins barks “no amnesty.” Chaos and confusion can be useful. It’s Trump’s whole bob-and-weave, his self-proclaimed genius. Is he foolish or crazy?
They keep everyone guessing.
So they ship out a 20-year-old construction worker from West Liberty to Guatemala, and people protest at Cedar Rapids because everyone liked Pascual Pedro. He came to Iowa with his father when he was 13. He was a soccer star. He worked for his grandfather’s siding company. His father was undocumented and was deported. Like father, like son. Pascual was visiting the immigration office as part of his residency requirements and was swept up and out. The family has been in West Liberty for more than 30 years.
No amnesty. Law and order. Except, Trump suggested at the fairgrounds, if the farmers would vouch for the help.
“We want to put the farmer in charge.”
They are drawing up a work program so as to keep the flow of hogs and poultry unmitigated.
It’s a wink and a nod. Right, Kristi? You with me, Brooke?
No amnesty.
Unless the boss vouches. Then it is not amnesty. It is necessary to keep chicken hind quarters at $1.49 per pound.
No farmer could vouch for Pascual. Just a whole community did. So he goes, and it shows that Trump is tough on immigrants.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Judiciary Committee always said he would never vote for amnesty. Sen. Joni Ernst is the one who assured Storm Lake there would be no deportation of non-criminal immigrants here. But that is not amnesty, it is just pragmatism.
Trump said he would deport everyone without papers. Now he must create papers for those without in order to keep hungry mouths from not biting him. He said the program would be ready in weeks.
He didn’t mean what he said. Nobody did. That’s why you may assume that the Trump tariffs are bluff and bluster. You want rare earth minerals for your computers? You drop the tariffs with China. Grassley needs potash from Canada? It gets an exemption.
The art of the deal. It’s just another TACO Tuesday.
Ernst can’t afford to see a packinghouse slowdown because of raids. Rep. Ashley Hinson can say that the West Liberty deportee got due process, and everyone can argue about it while business goes on as usual. When we posted a story on social media about federal funding cuts to the Storm Lake school budget, the comments devolved into an argument about racism and immigration within minutes, replete with personal attacks and insults.
Chaos and confusion are the point. They sow fear. It keeps everyone off balance just enough to dance with the devil. Ultimately the truth bears out: We can’t eat without immigrants. Trump admitted it at the fairgrounds. No amnesty except for … well, Ernst winks, we all know that they can’t shut down Storm Lake. Do not confuse that with amnesty: There is no amnesty for Pascual. That must be clear.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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Sorry to always comment. I was one of the unneeded sons who were exiled from Iowa in the late sixties. I wound up it a climatically unbearable place near Houston Texas. I stayed in the trade that put me through College because NASA had their quota of white scientists. The first Hispanic Crew that I worked on was in Houston in 1978 doing concrete work.They jabbered and were obtuse about working with me. Only five years out of College and having six Semesters of German, I started speaking German.”Speak English, Speak English!” They cried. Once the ice was broken, I found myself in the Company of displaced Farmers. They were pouring concrete because they were forced off of their Farms by US Economic policy.
Eight years later , I was a partner in a Commercial Construction Company. Nearly all of the Labor force was Hispanic. That year, Reagan created his Amnesty Program. Fill out the paperwork and get a Permanent Resident Document, There was even paperwork to transfer your Social Security and Medicare accounts to your new, authentic Social Security account. (They knew how many digits and simply made up numbers). The Director of Immigration (pre ICE) had four others paying in on his number.
To me, this was the only good thing Reagan ever did. I think it needed to be repeated every five years. Just keep in mind, most of these folks are like me, they came from Farms and wish they were still at home farming.
Their incompetence coupled with their insatiable appetite for cruelty will be their undoing. In the meantime innocent men, women, and children will continue to suffer.