Now Univision will not air the Miss Universe Pageant and the two Hispanic hosts left the show too. Thanks Mr. Trump for ruining that too for everyone because of your stupid uneducated comments about Mexicans. I wish he would do some recent research before he opens his mouth and alienates an entire sector of America’s population. Illegal immigration is one of the most controversial issues in American politics. In the fall of 2014 President Obama signed an executive order protecting immigrants from deportation which in turn has inflamed the debate.

Obama said, “Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law?” His opponents want the executive order overturned and to pass even stricter laws that will make it so difficult for the undocumented worker that they simply have to return back to the countries that they come from. Senator Ted Cruz a Republican from Texas said the “President’s amnesty is lawless and unconstitutional.” Donald Trump and Ted Cruz just needs to look at Alabama in 2011 that already tried this hard approach and failed miserably. Millions of potatoes and watermelons did not get picked for market and rotted in the fields because there was no one to pick the produce.

In 2011 Alabama passed one of the toughest immigration laws in American history. What happened when illegal immigrants were forced out was a disaster for them and the crop owners and for the nation. Mexicans work like ants. Somehow they are strong and can lift 3 times their weight. They work in groups of relatives including families of a wife and children in the fields too. Harvesting watermelons is back breaking. It is all done by hand. People stand in lines tossing large watermelons and catching them passing it to the next person till it reaches the end of the field and then carted in large boxes.

In Albertville, Alabama there are abandoned trailer parks where the workers would sleep. They left because they were afraid. Cops were pulling people over for just looking Mexican. The law was Alabama House Bill 56 which was passed in 2011 after a landslide vote in Alabama’s House and Senate. It not only went after illegal immigrants but went after anyone who would “shield or harbor an illegal immigrant” It effectively criminalized interacting with illegal immigrants. Since Latinos made up the bulk of the states immigrant population, they felt the overwhelming weight of the laws enforcement.

Mr. Trump should ask the police in Albertville if the drug trade and if rapes were down after they drove all the illegal immigrants out of their city and they will say NO. It really did not slow down crime a lot.  Potato    farmers tried to employ Americans but most showed up late, worked slower and were ready to head home after lunch. The gross annual product shrank by 2 Billion in one year. The law caused a large decline in the state’s economy.  At the Buttram Poultry Farm, they couldn’t find workers to catch chickens as fast as the immigrants could. Jonathan Buttram said that white people did not want the back breaking job of catching chickens. A Hispanic will catch 5 times more chickens than a white person.

Produce farmers went to Facebook to recruit workers in their Birmingham Farms to pick tomatoes. People came from the soup kitchens and the streets and halfway houses but none of them were adequate workers. One Hispanic would do 300 boxes of tomatoes in one day. Not one American was able to do that rate of back breaking work. Finally the farmers resorted to getting the prison chain gangs out on the fields to pick fruit and they were lazy to. The prison crews were interested in smoking more than picking quickly. Every type of alternative labor force failed.

Due to its overwhelming failure, Alabama’s lawmakers have been quietly dismantling the tough 56 Immigration law but the damage has been done. Many good workers have not returned. Now it is a  lose, lose situation. The farmer is losing money because they do not have enough workers and the workers have no representation anywhere so they continue to lose a fair wage. Until you have a good answer to solve this social and economic need in America just shut up Donald Trump and Alabama lawmakers who never provided a solution to the problem. They only created more problems for all.