🇲🇽 ❌ 🥑 🚙 — Mexico faces broad labor shortage, starts pilot program for migrant workers

🔶 A study by the Employers' Confederation of Mexico (COPARMEX) found that 75% of employers in Mexico say they are struggling to find workers.

🔶 For decades, Mexicans crossed the border to pick Americans’ lettuce, grapes and strawberries - but now the country is running short of farmworkers.

🔶 The workforce in agriculture in particular is graying fast; nearly three-quarters of Mexican campesinos are over 45. Young people are turning up their noses at farm jobs. And those willing to do migrant work have other options.

🔶 The U.S. appetite for made-in-Mexico goods, from avocados to automobiles to airplane parts, is growing so fast that it’s straining the workforce that produces them.

🔶 The problem is particularly acute in agriculture. The companies that put berries on Americans’ tables, such as Driscoll’s and Naturipe Farms, work with growers on both sides of the border, taking advantage of different harvest seasons.

🔶 But in Mexico, the farms are competing with manufacturers for workers. In a land once known for cheap, abundant labor, business groups say job vacancies could top 1 million.

🔶 In a once-unthinkable move, Mexican farmers are now calling for a major guest-worker program of their own. The government is taking the first step, planning to soon open a database of 14,000 jobs in agriculture and other sectors to non-Mexicans.

🔶 While wages here remain well below U.S. levels, employers hope some migrants might be willing to swap the American Dream for a Mexican one.

“We’re talking about Mexico having 1.5 million unfilled job openings,” said Giovanni Lepri, the Mexico representative for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “People in search of a better life could fill at least part of that.”

🔶 Mexican farmers say the exodus has compounded a labor shortage caused by the country’s declining birthrate and competition from other industries. They’re 10 to 15 percent below the number of crop pickers they need for the spring harvest.

“Mexico has to think seriously about what to do about workers,” said Juan Cortina, president of the National Agricultural Council, which represents farm producers. “We need temporary work visas for our neighbors to the south.”

🔶 Mexican employers have had to offer better conditions to attract workers. Harvesters’ salaries have been hiked up to 100 percent in the past few years.

🔶 Mexico has long recruited Guatemalan guest workers to help pick coffee beans in southern Chiapas state. But now authorities are crafting a broader program.

🔶 A new pilot program would allow migrants and people living abroad to apply for visas to fill jobs in Mexico.

🔶 The labor shortage is having a significant impact on not only agriculture, but businesses across all sectors, including manufacturing, wholesale trade, electricity, water, and gas.

🔶 Earlier this year, Toyota was forced to repeatedly halt production at a Mexico plant after local labour shortages snarled output at suppliers.

🔶 Delays have prompted the automaker to postpone the start of production of electric vehicles in the United States by six months to around June 2026.

🔗 Archive

🇮🇹 🇦🇱 - Italy deports illegal migrants to Albania on the model of the UK's Rwanda scheme.

Follow: @ThermopylaeNews

🇵🇸 🇮🇱 - A video of the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a hospital in Deir al-Balah is circulating, seemingly showing a family suffocating in flames as their tent burns.

Israeli sources claim the hospital housed a Hamas command post and was a legitimate military target.

Follow: @ThermopylaeNews

🇺🇸 💸 🇮🇱 Anti-Israel protesters have stormed the New York Stock Exchange

📎 Visegrad24

- BREAKING - U.S. Dept. of State Consular Affairs urges U.S. citizens to leave Lebanon 'now'

Lebanon: U.S. citizens in Lebanon are strongly encouraged to depart now. The commercial airport remains open and there is availability on commercial carriers. Please check flight options at Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport. Since September 27, the U.S. government also has added thousands of seats in extra capacity to accommodate U.S. citizens and their family members. Much of this capacity has gone unused. Please understand that these additional flights will not continue indefinitely...
...Read:

Source: Travel - State Dept on 'X'

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🇺🇬🇹🇷 Uganda signs rail building deal with Turkey's Yapi Merkezi

Uganda's government and Turkish construction firm Yapi Merkezi signed a contract to build a 272 kilometre (169 miles) section of railway, in a bid to boost regional trade, a Ugandan official said on Monday.

Uganda's Standard Gauge Railway project coordinator, Perez Wamburu, said the agreement was for the first section of a planned 1,700 km electric rail line, and the segment would cost 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion).

Its construction will start in November, Wamburu said. The project will increase trade and reduce transport costs, Uganda's works ministry permanent secretary, Bageya Waiswa, said at the signing ceremony.

The rail section will run from the capital Kampala to Malaba at the border with Kenya, connecting landlocked Uganda to its neighbour's rail network and on to the Indian Ocean seaport of Mombasa.

#Uganda #Turkey

@africaintel

🇺🇸 - Bloomberg: In bid to ramp up Black men's support, Kamala Harris proposes $20k forgivable loans to African Americans starting businesses, regulating cryptocurrencies, to legalize recreational cannabis and to "create businesses and access jobs in a burgeoning cannabis industry".

Furthermore, the democratic candidate is proposing to "increase pathways for apprenticeship and job opportunities, as well as invest in health-care programs that serve predominantly Black communities".

🇺🇸 💸 🌚 — Illinois Bill Would Give Colleges Taxpayer Dollars For Each Minority Student Enrolled

The bill would grant public institutions of higher education $6,000 per each Black or American Indian student they accept, $4,000 per Hispanic student, and $0 for White and Asian students

📎 zerohedge

🚨Blacks are 44% of the Washington DC population but 94% of police use of force incidents

A new report from the DC Office of Police Complaints reveals stark “racial disparities” in police use of force incidents.

🔸The data asserts that a whopping 94% of people involved in police use of force incidents in 2023 were Black.
🔸This figure would be up from 90% in 2022.
🔸In total, Black Americans make up only 44.4% of the population in Washington DC.

https://www.noticer.news/washington-dc-use-of-force-incidents-94-black/

- BREAKING - Biden warned Iran that any attempts on Trump’s life would be considered an 'act of war'

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