Click HERE for VIDEO and original article LESLIE, Ga.-- "It's a little heated out here," said Jaquis Jones as he stood in a dusty Sumter County field. For most of the men here, this was a first. They'd never before worked in an agricultural field - never even considered it until Tuesday. "This is the hardest work I've ever done," said Maurice Evans, a first-timer. Nineteen men started work here at dawn, a majority of them, probationers from the state Department of Corrections. By lunchtime, eight had quit. They get paid fifty cents per bucket of cucumbers -or at

By Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN // // ]]>June 15, 2011 12:13 p.m. Atlanta (CNN) -- With Georgia's new law cracking down on illegal immigration only weeks away from going into effect, the state's governor proposed a new solution Tuesday for growers worried about labor shortages: hiring people on criminal probation. Gov. Nathan Deal said in a statement Tuesday that he had asked the state's agriculture and corrections commissioners to connect unemployed probationers with farm jobs. "I believe this would be a great partial solution to our current status as we continue to move towards sustainable results with the legal

By John Derbyshire June 7, 2011  1:16 P.M. If you’ve ever worked on a farm, said the late Ken Galbraith (who knew), nothing else ever seems like work. Here’s a lady who obviously agrees. We’re in Georgia here, and the background to the story is: [Governor Nathan] Deal is looking for ways to fill a farm worker gap after some areas lost more than 50 percent of their laborers, the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association said. Many workers left Georgia after the governor signed an Arizona-inspired immigration law allowing local police to identify and detain illegal immigrants, the group

By Jeremy Redmon The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 7:12 p.m. Friday, May 27, 2011 State officials confirmed Friday that they have started investigating the scope of Georgia’s agricultural labor shortages following complaints that the state’s new immigration enforcement law is scaring away migrant farmworkers. Gov. Nathan Deal asked for the investigation Thursday in a letter to Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black. Deal wants Black’s department to survey farmers about the impact Georgia’s immigration law, House Bill 87, is having on their industry and report findings by June 10. The labor shortages have sent farmers scrambling to find other workers for their fall harvests.