Farms Facing Worker Shortage for Harvest

Members of the Minutemen, an anti-illegal immigration group, gather Thursday, Sept. 28, 2006, in Los Angeles, as demonstrators nearby demanded unionization of mostly immigrant workers at a dozen high-end hotels. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) (Damian Dovarganes - AP)

And that can be backbreaking, hot work, especially picking berries in the early summer sun.

Carnes said increased border security is keeping even legal day laborers from crossing the border because lines have lengthened.

"There becomes a point where the paperwork and time doesn't equal the money," Carnes said. "I think we just scared them off with all the talk about immigration and closing the borders."

The U.S. Border Patrol has caught well over 1 million people along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last three fiscal years, including the one set to end Sept. 30, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In 2003 alone, it caught just over 900,000 in the four border states.

Howard Rosenberg, an agricultural labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said while he's heard complaints about shortages for years, the concerns have worsened recently.

"It varies in how intensely it's felt and where it's felt and how much it's reported," Rosenberg said. "It is very difficult to tease out the realities from the perception."

Rosenberg said a border crackdown may not have as much to do with reductions as with the immigrant community spreading out geographically and to different industries.

"If people think that a crackdown on the border is keeping people away, how do they really know that?" Rosenberg asked. "There's still an awful lot of activity."

Growers and farm worker advocates say the beginning of a solution is the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act of 2005, dubbed "AgJobs."

The bill would provide temporary legal status for farmworkers who can prove they worked at least 100 days during a certain period. The workers could apply for a green card if they work an additional 360 days in agriculture over the subsequent six years. A slightly modified version of AgJobs passed in May in the Senate's immigration reform bill, which the House has not yet voted on.

Without comprehensive immigration reform, growers will continue to move their operations south of the border, said Tim Chelling, a vice president of the Western Growers Association, which represents growers in California and Arizona.

"It's more than anecdotal; we know that they're down there to the tune of thousands and thousands of acres," he said.

Growers are "half out the door already," said Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the conservative New York-based Manhattan Institute think tank.

"A Mexican worker is going to pick these crops one way or the other, and the only question is whether they pick them here or across the border in Mexico," Jacoby said.