Should Have Maybe Thought Of That Beforehand

Via OTB, in their rush to go after brown people, Georgia Republicans and Gov. Nathan Deal are finding themselves facing the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Gov. Nathan Deal is asking for an expedited report on how the crackdown on illegal immigration enacted by the General Assembly this spring is affecting Georgia agriculture.

Farmers have complained in recent weeks that their crops are rotting in the fields and orchards because migrant workers afraid of deportation are bypassing Georgia in droves, even though the law doesn’t take effect until July 1.

Deal, who signed the legislation last month and has been a strong supporter of immigration reform, said he wants to get beyond anecdotal evidence and look at actual numbers.

Toward that end, the governor said he wants Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Gary Black to deliver a report on the issue by the end of next week.

A couple of issues here.  First, what did the Georgia GOP think was going to happen to the state's farms and orchards when they passed yet another anti-immigration measure just to score political points with white voters?  Did they think the peaches were going to magically pick themselves because America is the most exceptional country ever to exist on Earth?  Did they think farmers were going to offer $20 an hour and benefits on Monster.com because the problem is that people don't know how awesome fruit picking is as a career?  Were they convinced that people were going to flock to farms because the only "unemployment problem" in Georgia is that workers are too lazy to fill manual labor positions?

Second, maybe this is something Republicans should have considered before they passed the damn law in the first place.  So when there's fruit and vegetable shortages across the country this year because the migrant workers have been chased out of Sun Belt red states, and farmers aren't going to start paying big bucks to workers because they'd go bankrupt, what happens then?  Cut taxes on farms to encourage tomatoes to jump off the vine and into baskets?

Gotta love Republican big government solutions.