from Common Dreams
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday drew instant jeers when she defended the mass deportation of immigrant farm laborers and suggested that they could be replaced by Americans who are currently enrolled in Medicaid.
While speaking in Washington, D.C., Rollins declared that there would be "no amnesty" for immigrant farm workers despite President Donald Trump saying just days ago that he was willing to let these workers stay at their jobs.
Instead, Rollins said that the mass deportations of farm laborers would "continue in a strategic way" and administration policy would be to "move the workforce toward automation and 100% American participation, which, again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do fairly quickly."
The idea that there are 34 million "able-bodied adults" on Medicaid who can be easily relocated to work picking crops is pure fantasy. In the first place, an estimated 64% of American adults who receive Medicaid already work, and most of those adult recipients who don't have jobs are either primary caregivers, are attending school, or have an illness or disability that prevents them from working.
A report released earlier this year authored by Economic Policy Institute economist Hilary Wething also poked holes in the narrative that millions of "able-bodied adults without dependents" ("ABAWDs") were sponging off the system...
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