Friday, January 9, 2009
Crazy Crap Tenn. Woman Claims Reverse Discrimination for Farm Job
Posted by Brantley Hargrove on Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 6:32 AM
It's not often you have to dissuade largely sedentary, manual labor-averse Americans from taking back-wracking work on a farm. That is unless you're Sabrina Steele of Maryville. This hardy mother of two says she was discriminated against for being an American...in America. Yeah, you just read that. When she applied for a spot at Pope's Plant Farm in Greenback, the owner did everything he could to persuade her that this job would suck big time. He told her there'd be 80-hour weeks. He told her she'd be the only English speaker and that the male-female ratio would be 20 to 1.
All this, she says, so he could hire more foreigners. Thing is, by law the owner has to look for domestic labor. Only when none can be found is he allowed to hire workers with temporary visas. It's part of a Bush plan to make it easier on temporary foreign workers. So Steele fought back, filing complaints with the Department of Justice. This type of seasonal migrant work is apparently increasingly hard to get for U.S. citizens. When we're fighting migrant workers with temporary visas for what are arguably shitty jobs, things must be bad.
Comments (5)
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2009 is going to put you to the test, reconciling your sympathy for immigrant workers and your complaints about unemployment.
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Maybe so, alum, but before you start wagging your finger, you may recall we are a country comprised entirely of immigrants--unless you're Native American.
And this is an extreme case. The amount of overlap between the jobs immigrants are seeking and the jobs citizens are seeking is, I imagine, pretty minimal.
im neither wagging fingers, nor an immigrant, though someone further up my lineage was i suppose. as was yours, as was the hallowed native americans if you want to get into historical irrelevancies.. (unless youre planning to invoke eden, there is no such thing as native.)
if there is any finger wagging to be done, it should be done by citizens toward citizens, for thinking certain work is *beneath* them. why is there a delineation between work for citizens and work for immigrants? but hey, i guess i can't blame folks if they're gonna get paid to not work. seems like there ought to be somebody i could blame though...
No, I won't invoke Eden. Let's stick to modern history here. Fair or unfair, the cold, hard reality is that unless you're an engineer, if you speak little English--or have little education--you'll get stuck with the shit jobs. These are jobs most of us wouldn't want anyway. Doesn't seem right, but there it is.
"These are jobs most of us wouldn't want anyway."
yes, but i am lucky enough to have a job (engineer by the way, nice guess) and so do you. but if we didn't, and couldn't find one we wanted, would we still be too good for a job typically done by an immigrant? i'd like to think not, but the rate of people filing for unemployment begs to differ. (this is where the conversation is typically curtailed due to wildly diverging ideologies...)
