Immigration solution might be worse than the problem (Insight) (al.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Press-Register Editorial Board

By WAYNE FLYNT

Special to the Press-Register


In the last days of September, when I most enjoy Chandler Mountain tomatoes, I stopped at two markets where I usually buy them — and they had only tomatoes from Tennessee and North Carolina. The pickup trucks filled with Sand Mountain tomatoes parked along U.S. 280 last year were gone.

I hate plastic-tasting tomatoes from Florida, California and Mexico, so I go on a tomato fast from the first frost on Chandler and Sand mountains in October until the first Baldwin County tomatoes appear in late June.

When I asked my farmer friends what happened, they identified the culprit as the Legislature’s new immigration bill.

I was not surprised. Turning a problem over to the Alabama Legislature to solve is like placing a 2-year-old in charge of a preschool.

Consider these problems our lawmakers have not solved throughout Alabama’s history: a racist constitution conceived in the violence and political corruption of Reconstruction; reapportionment of the Legislature every 10 years as required in that document; taxes that take a higher percentage of income from the poor than from the rich; perpetually underfunded public schools; an inhumane mental health system; extending the right to vote to women and African-Americans; and keeping Jefferson County financially solvent.
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more: http://blog.al.com/press-register-commentary/2011/10/immigration_solution_might_be.html

[dkf]

1. Why can't we turn farmers into decent job creators?

I really don't understand why this is so impossible.