The poverty and unemployment in California's
Central Valley cities like Fresno, Modesto, and Stockton are partially
the result of decades of illegal immigration.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates that of the more than three million illegals living in the state, 70 percent are from Mexico.
57 percent of the illegals have an education below the level of a high school diploma or GED.
The effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal
irrigation water in the Central Valley has idled tens of thousands of
acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed.
Manufacturing plants in the towns in these areas — which used to make
harvesters, hydraulic lifts, trailers, food-processing equipment — have
largely shut down; their production has been shipped off overseas or
south of the border.
Agriculture has increasingly become corporatized
and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed. So
real unemployment runs somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.
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| What's sad is that 50 years ago they were friendly and thriving farming communities filled with hard working families. Now most wouldn't go into any of them without a concealed weapon. |
