Immigrant farm laborers have skills sets that are'plementary to American workers, so replacing any part of that equation would equally impact the other half. An overhaul would also raise the wages for both kinds of workers, while robot technology would lower wages.Meanwhile, agricultural industries are already in trouble without immigration reform. Farms in North Carolina are hard-pressed to find permanent American workers to replace migrant workers. Of the 245 unemployed North Carolinians hired at farms, only 163 people showed up on the first day of work. Worse still, only seven people stuck to the job through the end of the growing season.
From beneath the brim of a tattered straw cap, Oscar Argueta, a 35-year-old coffee farmer from the cloud forests of Intibucá, Honduras, grins as he tops off a plastic crate of wild Maine blueberries.Argueta said he can make as much as US$1,000 per week here, with free housing, subsidized food and even health care provided, a deal that has long enticed migrants to Maine's blueberry fields from as far away as Mexico, Honduras and Haiti.The work is back-breaking, he said, but the atmosphere festive. Mariachi music booms from loudspeakers, a roving lunch truck hawks authentic Mexican fare and workers jibe one another in their native Spanish.
Despite the perks, this year's trip will be Argueta's last to the far northeast of the United States, nearly 4,000 miles from the border with Mexico that is the focus of much of the nation's immigration debate."The tractors are taking all the good work," he said.Argueta has a work visa and entered the country legally — a requirement as the larger blueberry growers adopt E-Verify, a federal electronic verification system that quickly catches false documents.Jobs previously filled by those with dubious documents haven't transferred to Americans, as some proponents of E-Verify anticipated. Instead, many of Maine's largest growers have pushed to mechanize the harvest, eliminating many of the once-coveted seasonal jobs.
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