King Country Rank IN Top Ten For Immigrant Labor

King Country Rank IN Top Ten For Immigrant Labor

Susan Allen
Susan Allen
I'm Susan Allen and this is Washington Ag Today. It seems a cruel irony that while our Eastside counties struggle to find immigrant labor, Seattle's King County is seeing more foreign workers than ever before and they are filling a host of job positions.

According to a an interesting piece Tim Henderson wrote for Stateline this past Wednesday, Seattle's King County now ranks as one of the nation's top counties with the highest immigration gain in this decade. He reports Immigrants are flooding into Seattle to " fill a void in fields like information technology and engineering, as tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft expand operations. Many are from India, with visas for skilled workers while in other parts of this nation Asians are replacing Mexicans in immigration numbers. Stateline A Stateline analysis of Census found "more than 75,000 new immigrants arrived between 2010 and 2015, an increase of 24 percent over the previous decade. The number of immigrants arriving from India more than doubled between 2005 and 2014, and the number from China grew more than 50 percent. Immigration also was up in neighboring Pierce and Snohomish counties, where many workers are finding homes as King County home prices and rents rise in the tech boom."

On the eastern side of the state we will have the 3rd largest cherry crop on record, but will we have enough pickers? It's doubtful given tougher border constraints, a better Mexican economy and smuggling fees that can reach as high as $8000. It will be the smaller farmers and those who fruit is latter to ripen that will be hit the hardest

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