There is no need for wine grapes to be grown in Virginia and Maryland, and no need to import unfree foreign labor to subsidize the already thick wallets of people like Donald Trump and his children, who are simultaneously pushing to deport people who have lived in the U.S. for decades, even as they seek to import foreign workers paid ridiculously low wages.
In Maryland and Virginia, the wineries are small, with small production. This is agriculture without historical roots and without a sound economic basis, which is why so many of these vest-pocket wineries run as entertainment businesses, with hot air balloons and bands blasting loud music out over the countryside every weekend.
In California, Australia, Italy, and France, where better wine is made, the grape harvest is mechanized.
As I have said in the past, if you can't mechanize fruit and agricultural production in the U.S., or pay living wages to hire American workers, you need to grow something else. The land will not lie fallow; it never has. And we can always fill our glasses with foreign (or even California) wine.
Importing a poverty class and creating permanent population growth attached to permanent liabilities and dependencies (schools, housing, roads, sewage, trash, energy consumption) so a handful of rich people can get wealthier, is a fools game.
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