WASHINGTON (CNN) — It’s not every day a presidential hopeful sends Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff a head of lettuce, but that’s what Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, is doing Wednesday to show his disagreement with Chertoff’s recent comments on how failure of passing immigration reform might affect the agricultural industry.
Tancredo says he disagrees with recent comments Chertoff made that suggested if the immigration bill fails, the agricultural industry will suffer. To prove his point he is sending Chertoff a head of lettuce, a fruit basket, and a card saying, “much, much more where this comes from.”
“The administration has taken hyperbole to a whole new level this time,” Tancredo said in a statement. “They are now trying to convince the public that without amnesty, the American people are going to starve?”
“The agriculture industry and the free market has managed to keep producing through floods, droughts, and $3.00 per gallon gas,” Tancredo added, “I doubt very seriously that a nominal increase in labor costs is going to be the end of lettuce as we know it.”
In a July 14 speech before the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, Chertoff said, “Without reform that brings workers in legitimately, that makes it efficient for businesses, including agricultural businesses, to hire those workers efficiently, and without some kind of a mechanism to promote agriculture and to deal with the current illegal work force, we’re going to put people like you and those you represent in a terrible bind — they’re either going to have to break the law, which is a bad thing to do, or they’re going to have to shut down their farms, which is a bad thing to do, or what’s going to wind up happening is those farms are going to Mexico and Canada.”
– CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney
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