Print-Friendly Version    

Tobacco. Southeastern tobacco farmers are the largest employers of H-2A guest workers, but the number of migrants could fall sharply because of a federal tobacco buyout bill approved as part of a corporate tax-break law. Both the House and the Senate approved plans in 2004 to buy out the tobacco quotas farmers need to receive government-guaranteed prices for their crop. This offers a $10 to $12 billion windfall to quota or allotment owners, a third of whom are in North Carolina.

The quotas were issued in the late 1930s to prop up grower prices and incomes. Farmers who do not own a quota pay $0.35 to $0.40 a pound to lease a tobacco quota from owners, and then are guaranteed a government-set price of at least $1.85 a pound. There are about 430,000 holders of tobacco quota and one percent are expected to receive more than $1 million each.

Georgia has four of the six counties in which Hispanic residents are growing fastest; 30 of Georgia's 159 counties saw their Hispanic populations increase by at least 40 percent between 2001 and 2004. Georgia has 8.7 million residents, including 541,000 Hispanics.

The face of the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia has been changed by immigration, as seasonal apple pickers settled and took year-round jobs in poultry processing plants.

Taxes and Jobs. Many cities and towns in rural and agricultural areas offer tax breaks to keep or attract jobs, and few go after companies that accept these tax breaks if they break their job promises. Maytag accepted property tax breaks to keep a factory with 1,600 jobs open in Galesburg, Illinois, and then moved them to Mexico, prompting the city to consider suing Maytag to recoup some of the tax-break support.

Populations are declining in many Midwestern towns, prompting almost frantic searches for new employers to prevent downward spirals. A call center offering 35 jobs (and promising more) in a Nebraska town of fewer than 700 residents received $500,000 in federal community development funds, half to help cover employee training and start-up costs and the other half in the form of a seven-year, no-interest loan. In addition, the call center received an 8,000-square-foot building as a gift. Town leaders consider the center a good employer because it offers at least $9 an hour plus health insurance.

1960s Riots. Between 1964 and 1971, there were 750 riots in US cities outside the south to which Blacks moved in the great rural-urban migration that began in the 1920s. Some 228 people were killed and 12,741 injured, and many Black urban neighborhoods were left in ruins. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/wparchive/working03.html)

The riots depressed inner-city incomes and property values for decades. In cities with riots, median Black family income dropped nine percent from 1960 to 1970, and Black male employment rates fell significantly. In cities with riots, the median value of black-owned homes dropped 15 percent or more from 1960 to 1970. Researchers found that cities without riots tended to have city managers, who were perhaps more flexible and less political than mayors, and to have lots of rain in April 1968, the month that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

John Grossmann, "Tapping the Work Ethic in Fading Rural Towns," New York Times, November 11, 2004. Timothy Egan, "Towns Hand Out Tax Breaks, Then Cry Foul as Jobs Leave," New York Times, October 20, 2004.