President Trump‘s Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has a brilliant plan to replace the deported immigrant farm workers our agricultural industry depends on with the Medicaid recipients who will be stripped of their healthcare over the next year. On this week’s show, Ali Velshi breaks down how absurd this so-called plan is.
Where to start? First, there are not 34 million able-bodied adults on Medicaid available to become farm workers. Forty-four percent of Medicaid recipients are already employed full-time, and another 20 percent part-time. Second, are we planning on uprooting people from all parts of the country and shipping them to farms, fields, and orchards come harvest time?
The immigration crackdown was sold to the American people on the premise that immigrants are dangerous criminals who are somehow both stealing our benefits and also our jobs at the same time. The justification for stripping away funding for Medicaid is similar, arguging people on Medicaid are lazy and should be working. Neither premise is correct.
Americans who receive Medicaid do so because they qualify for it, either because of illness or income. Immigrant farm workers are here because our food industry has been built around the need for migrant labor. Velshi says this “plan” is ludicrous, not based in facts or reality, and it’s being sold to anyone who will listen to justify the damage happening to both our healthcare and our food supply.
LISTEN: ALI VELSHI ON THE TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE LIE
WATCH: VELSHI SHOWS HOW VITAL MIGRANT FARM WORKERS ARE
MORE FROM MSNBC’S ALI VELSHI
