Illegal Immigration Crackdown Could Cost Growers

Immigration reform and stricter enforcement of current immigration laws could significantly boost labor costs for California’s $20 billion fresh fruit, nut, and vegetable crops, according to a recent study by agricultural economists at University of California-Davis and USDA.

Such action would likely have a snowball effect, prompting growers to adjust by increasing mechanization and introducing harvesting aids to boost laborers’ productivity, they predict. Imports may also rise. “California’s produce industry depends on a constant influx of new, foreign-born laborers, and more than half of those are unauthorized laborers, primarily from Mexico,” says Phillip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics and one of the nation’s leading authorities on agricultural labor.

Martin’s study, conducted with Linda Calvin of USDA’s Economic Research Service, is especially timely in light of the actions taken in such states as Arizona and Georgia to approve illegal immigration enforcement. The study was supported by USDA and the University of California Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics. The report, titled “Labor Trajectories in California’s Produce Industry,” appears in the current issue of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Update.

“The cost of hiring these laborers will likely rise as the U.S. government ramps up enforcement of immigration laws by installing more physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border and requiring more audits of workers’ I-9 employment verification forms,” Martin says.

He notes that such audits often cause workers to quit their jobs rather than clear up discrepancies in their documents. As a result, some farm employers already are making plans to hire higher-paid, legal guestworkers, who must be provided with government-approved housing. Martin projects that immigration reform could result in the legalization of currently unauthorized farmworkers, again encouraging farm employers to turn to the higher paid guestworkers to tend and harvest their crops.

If labor costs do rise, Martin suggests that three major adjustments could occur: mechanization to reduce the need for hand labor, the introduction of more harvesting aids to increase the efficiency of laborers, and an increase in produce imports if rising costs make U.S. produce less competitive. For example, there could be wider use of mechanized harvesting for raisin-grapes, a shift to more imports in the asparagus industry, and the use of harvesting aids — such as in-field conveyor belts — to speed strawberry harvest.

Source: UC-Davis News Service

For information on the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold an Arizona law requiring all employers to utilize E-Verify, a federal electronic employment eligibility verification system that had been voluntary nationwide, click.

To read about the recent shortage of migrant workers in Georgia, which many fruit and vegetable growers are blaming on the state’s new immigration law and which is jeopardizing millions of dollars worth of crops, click.