Senior fellow Michael Clemens's immigration brief cited in McClatchy News article on immigration.
WASHINGTON – Walk the aisles of any neighborhood grocery store today and you're likely to find tomatoes picked in Sinaloa, Mexico, or oranges from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Farmers across the country warn that shoppers will find even more imported food on their store shelves if Congress fails to pass immigration legislation that would guarantee them enough workers to milk their cows and harvest their fruits and vegetables.
"The bottom line is people need to decide whether they'd rather import their labor or import their food," said Randall Patterson, a China Grove, N.C., farmer who grows strawberries, cucumbers and watermelons among his crops.
The 52-year-old third-generation farmer employs about 140 foreign-born workers on his 1,200-acre farm legally through a federal system similar to the one a bipartisan team of senators wants to overhaul and streamline.
But crops are being left to rot in fields from Florida to California and Washington state because farmers can't find enough workers to pick their crops. And many of their former workers no longer show up because they fear being stopped by police on their way to the fields and deported. Many already have been.