ABC mentions Senior Fellow Michael Clemens' recent immigration brief.
Farm jobs. The pay is usually low and the work is grueling.
That's why no one should be surprised by a study released on Wednesday looking at immigration and agriculture in North Carolina.
The upshot: Almost no U.S.-born workers are taking farm jobs in that state. And even during the recession, native workers weren't more likely to seek employment in agriculture.
That means that growers need an easy-to-use guest worker program that will give them access to immigrant guest workers with too much expense or red tape. That's the recommendation of the report, which was drafted by two pro-immigration reform groups, the Partnership for a New American Economy and the Center for Global Development.
Growers already have a guest-worker program, and there's no cap on the number of workers they can bring in. But the requirements are too strenuous, so businesses opt for undocumented workers, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest grower association in the country.
Of course, you might wonder why farmers won't just be able to keep the immigrant workers they have now.
That's because immigration reform could shake up the industry.
A reform bill being considered in the Senate would offer legal status to undocumented farm workers who are in the country now. They could become legal permanent residents in five to seven years, if they keep working in agriculture during that time.