Guest Workers’ Flight Irks Sheep Ranchers
29th December 2015
Denis Kowitz has a shepherd-retention problem at his Idaho wool-growing operation, and he hopes changes in federal immigration law will help fix it.
“One was named Oscar, the other…well, I can’t remember. But he’s gone!” he says of two hired hands who left in March, just when he needed them for lambing season on his ranch in Rupert, in southern Idaho.
Mr. Kowitz said he paid about $3,000 per shepherd to find them and fly them from Peru. He said he assumed they quit to work in construction or at a dairy or landscaper. In the past 16 months, he said he has lost six shepherds under similar circumstances.
Boy, that sure sounds like a problem. Sure can’t have immigrants moving around as if they were free to choose jobs. People might think that the whole Open Borders thing is about cheap labor, not humanitarian heart-bleed.