Immigrant Worker Shortage

Attitude and Policy shifts towards immigration in the United States is coming to a head in California where farmers are facing a possible severe labor shortage:

California Faces a Shortage of Farm Hand for Harvest (Financial Times subscription required)

California's farmers are being racked by one of their periodic bouts of anxiety over the shortage of field hands. They want help urgently to replace low-cost labour being lost to the relative comforts and better pay of work in construction and retailing - and the thousands of undocumented immigrants being kept out of the state by more stringent policing of the Mexican border.
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In the longer term Mr Nassif's organisation, in an uncommon alliance with unions and other growers' groups, supports a proposal in Congress to reform immigration law. The plan, known as "Agjobs" in its current manifestation, would allow immigrants willing to stay in agriculture for a set number of years to earn the right to permanent residency in the US.

Defining the scale of the problem is difficult because of farming's reliance on a largely undocumented workforce. According to the California Farm Bureau Federation, another leading lobby group, the industry usually needs about 450,000 seasonal workers at this time of year.....