CNBC Just Spilled The Awful Truth About California

Posted • September 2, 2025: Question: What do you call "key sectors" of the world's fourth-largest economy when they rely on illegal alien labor working for substandard wages, fewer benefits, and at greater risk of exploitation? I'd call it a crime. But in California, they call it "putting billions of dollars at risk" when President Donald Trump actually enforces the law. You know, like the chief executive takes an oath to do. With California's $4 trillion gross domestic production, Gov. Gavin Newsom likes to boast that his state is the world's fourth-largest economy. But a new CNBC report by Kate Rogers reveals more than it meant to about how "Trump’s immigration policy threatens key sectors" of Newsom's state. One in four Californians is an immigrant, and, according to the Bay Area Economic Institute and the University of California-Merced, one in five of those is here illegally. In other words, California is home to around two million or more illegal aliens.

"As the Trump administration continues to ramp up immigration enforcement, industries key to the state’s $4 trillion economy like agriculture, construction and hospitality could be among those hardest hit by the loss of California’s immigrant workforce," Rogers reported. “These are the workers that are keeping our economy afloat. They’re keeping businesses open,” Abby Raisz, research director at the Institute, told CNBC. Joe Garcia, president of the California Farmworker Association and CEO of Jaguar Labor Contracting, said in the report, "The lettuce, the strawberries, all the wine we drink on a daily basis, fruit juices– everything that a farmworker picks, packs, pre-harvest– they do the jobs all year round that put food on your table." Did he mean to repeat the "Who will pick our cotton?" trope? Regardless, CNBC said that Garcia's firm "connects farmworkers to growers," which I guess makes Jaguar Labor a profitable middleman in the market for illegal workers.

"Sectors like construction and farming are staring down worker shortages that predate any change to immigration policy. In California, more than sixty percent of construction workers are immigrants and a quarter of them are undocumented," according to the story. California's unemployment rate is among the highest in the nation, and according to a Public Policy Institute last June, "about 10% of Californians — almost 2 million — are un- or underemployed as of the last quarter." Two million illegals. Two million unemployed citizens. Does anybody else see the problem here? Can anyone else taste the crocodile tears when Los Angeles restaurant owner (and illegal alien employer, apparently) Courtney Kaplan complained, "The biggest challenge for us, aside from the lost revenue and the decrease in business, has been the uncertainty of every day." Overregulation and overtaxation jack up the price of everything in California, including labor. Now, business and political leaders swear to God the state's economy can't function without the underpaid workers they euphemistically call "undocumented." (…)

• More at: PJ Media - CNBC Just Spilled the Awful Truth About California
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/09/02/cnbc-just-spilled-the-awful-truth-about-california-n4943249
CNBC: Trump’s immigration policy threatens key sectors of California’s economy, long reliant on immigrant workers
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/01/trump-california-newsom-immigrant-workers.html