As a result, illegal immigrants are taking their labor to nearby states such as Florida and North Carolina, where no such legislation exists. Suddenly, Georgia’s largest industry, agriculture, has 11,000 job openings.

So why is no one picking berries in Georgia, where, according to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor, the unemployment rate in May was nearly 10 percent? Wouldn’t the unemployed love to make $8 to $12 an hour doing honest work? I’m sure they would, if the work wasn’t backbreaking, or if the farmers offered health care coverage.

But the work is backbreaking and farmers don’t offer health care benefits. As a result, crops are going to waste in Georgia to the tune of a projected $9 billion annually.

That’s a lot of money, but aren’t the costs of allowing illegal immigrants higher? You know, because immigrants disrupt communities and are lawless individuals who commit violent crimes. Actually, Georgia estimates illegal immigrants cost the state $2 billion annually, most of which is tied to health care costs and education of immigrant children. The last time I checked, nine was more than two, so the costs of illegal immigrants aren’t going to outdo the annual agricultural damage to the economy.

I’m sure when the Georgia Legislature passed this new law, they didn’t foresee these consequences. They knew the law would work, but their assumption that people would rather work 12-14 hours a day in 90-degree weather for only $8 to $12 an hour than collect unemployment checks didn’t add up.

So how does Georgia get workers back into its fields?

The state could repeal the law, but that would involve admitting the law was a mistake less than a month after it went into effect, so I think that prospect is off the table.

Farmers could offer to pay workers more in order to attract the unemployed, but that doesn’t make the work any less strenuous or more desirable. And if farmers did pay their workers more, food prices would go up accordingly, which is the last thing unemployed Georgians need to see.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal proposes sending unemployed probationers to work on farms, but the vision of African-Americans working in a Georgia field for long hours and low wages simply because they can’t find another job smacks of an earlier practice, sharecropping, which dredges up all sorts of racial issues that are better left in the past.

Or, someone could instantaneously invent a machine that picks multiple kinds of crops at the same time while simultaneously checking those crops for viability.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on that last one.

So what do you want, Georgia?

Do you want to stand on principle and deter illegal immigrants for the sake of deterring illegal immigrants? Do you want food prices to skyrocket as farmers have to start raising pay and offering benefits to their workers because the workers are here legally?

Or do you want to allow illegal immigrants to come in legally, do the labor that no one else appears to want to do and keep the price of food down?

There’s no right answer in this scenario. There’s an answer I prefer, but I didn’t choose a career in agriculture, don’t live in Georgia and only enjoy the cheap, cheap fruits of illegal immigrants’ labor. But I can see the other side of this issue: Illegal immigrants cheapen those who go through the system and make the effort to enter this country legally, and most illegal immigrants choose not to put their income back in the American economy.

But, so far, standing on principle is costing the economy of Georgia billions. Perhaps it’s time to re-examine the principle.

Lazarus Jackson is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at jacks920@msu.edu.