David Ostendorf: Roy Beck, Dairyman

Roy Beck, Dairyman
August 17, 2009

By Rev. David L. Ostendorf
www.imagine2050.net

The ever-media-hungry Roy Beck of NumbersUSA and The John Tanton Network hoisted on his virtual coveralls recently and pontificated on the growing number of immigrants whose labor puts milk on our tables every day. Roy—who likely doesn’t know a Holstein from a Jersey or a milk parlor from a Beltway parlor—ranted as usual about immigrants taking jobs on dairy farms at “… a time when we know it’s possible to find Americans to do this work.”

Roy definitely needs to get outside the Beltway more often…

The nation’s dairy farms are increasingly reliant on immigrant labor to do the hard work that, as most any farmer will tell you, “Americans won’t do.” Upwards of forty percent of the dairy workforce is comprised of immigrant workers, now responsible for two-thirds of the country’s milk production. As dairy farmer Ray Souza states in the same Wall Street Journal article citing Beck, “Once Americans get the job description, they lose interest real quick.”

Continue article at http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/2009/08/17/roy-beck-dairyman/

Rev. David L. Ostendorf is the managing editor for Imagine 2050. Contributors to the Imagine 2050 include activists, immigrants, artists and students who are invested in a future nation that embraces multiculturalism and tolerance.

Posted in: Dairy Farmers,Imagine 2050,Immigration,John Tanton Network,News,Politics