Senators' immigration deal offers fix for farmworker shortage
Severe farmworker shortages that have left tons of fruits and vegetables unplanted or unpicked would get a fix under an immigration reform deal reached by senators Thursday. The immigration agreement includes a pilot legalization program for agriculture workers, said Scott Gerber, spokesman for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Farmers say that as immigration enforcement has tightened in recent years, worker shortages have ranged from 10 percent to 30 percent across the labor-intensive produce industry and have also struck dairy farms and nurseries. In some cases crops have gone unharvested. In others, farmers have chosen not to plant, or have reduced plantings of the most labor-intensive crops, such as asparagus.
See "Senators' immigration deal offers fix for farmworker shortage", Erica Werner, San Francisco Chronicle, May 16, 2007