Field Work is the Same in Any Country

That is to say.... field workers are the same in every country.  Sorry for all of the radio silence but I'm still outside of Netanya working on a farm here.  While I have loads to tell y'all about my life, what I really want to talk about is workers.

I get CNN here, unfortunately, and if I have to hear another talk about immigration I'm going to scream.  It wasn't a big piece on immigration, just a little interest story dropped in and I heard the quote you always here on immigration.  Essentially, send undocumented workers back.  Americans need those jobs and the economy can function without them they're a drain on resources blah blah blah blah blah.

In Israel, all farm workers are Thai.  Same shit, different pile.

My coworkers work eleven hours a day in 120 degree heat.  I work eight.  Granted, I don't get paid... but this is the off season.  In the fall, it's more like thirteen hours a day.  They don't take Shabbat off so they work seven days a week.  My coworkers took the Queen's Day off a couple days ago (a Thai holiday) and Anun told me that it was his 5th day off since he started two years ago.  If you work from sun up to sun down for five years (a fairly average stint of time to work in Israel before going back to Thailand), when do you do anything else?  The answer is, you don't.

In Idan, many of the Thai workers had drinking problems.  They went through cases of beer a day.  You can't save up much money that way but what would you do if you had that schedule and were thousands of miles away from your home and family? But if you're not saving up much money and you're reliant on your job for staying in the country and the conditions are subpar and you're working most of the day... what does that sound like?

I can't stand it. Anywhere you go, it's the same.  Some cultural group working the fields and everyone pretending like this exploitation is okay.  That it's not a problem.  Everywhere I go, I ask people who works in the fields and without pause there's an answer... the Poles, the North Africans, the Thais, the Mexicans.

So here's my response to the idiots on CNN.  No.  Americans do not need those jobs.  Because if they did, they would already have those jobs.  I can tell you the exact number of Americans with bachelors degrees or higher from their home country who applied to pick fruit for minimum wage in California or hand clear a field in Israel or Germany or Spain this year.    It's zero.  The number with even a high school diploma is similarly low.  I even loathe field work most days and anyone who knows me knows that I love crap like working in fields.  I definitely would not work under the conditions here or anywhere that migrant workers work under.

Without exploiting these people, we wouldn't have food on our plates.  So maybe instead of shouting about how we should take away more of these peoples rights we should at least start with a "Thank You".