Are we about to kill the golden (agricultural) goose?

Forget whether or not your employees are “legal” for a moment and just check their names. Does Miguel or Jesus outnumber Bill or Gustav? When you choose two languages to communicate with your crew, is it English and Polish? English and French? Or English and Spanish?

Si, senor y senora. Hablamos Espanol.

Illegal immigrants make up well over half the nation's roughly 1.8 million farm workers. In some areas and at certain times of the year, that number skyrockets to almost 100%. Cutting off the flow of willing workers — legal or not — to pick fruits and vegetables or to tend cattle will put an abrupt end to American agriculture.

A story written by the Associated Press quoted fourth-generation vegetable farmer Will Rousseau who said, "We know local folks won't take those (picking) jobs, at any price." Rousseau hires up to 700 seasonal workers to harvest his crops in Phoenix and I’m willing to bet few of them are a card-carrying citizens of the U.S.A.

Slamming our southern door will be felt hard on the production side, too. Tyson Foods, one of the largest employers of Hispanics in the U.S. (legal and otherwise) cut back on hours Monday because management was concerned that a nationwide immigration rally would seriously affect attendance by its Hispanic workers. Last Friday, Tyson Foods told its team members that the company supported comprehensive immigration reform and how they could weigh in on the national debate.

A few jingoistic “America Firsters” want the House and Senate to approve a bill calling for military enforcement of the Mexican border and make it a felony to be in the country illegally. To its everlasting shame, the House has already approved it.

A slightly more intelligent bill reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee would allow a few illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship while expanding an existing guest worker program. I don’t think too many “illegals” would step up and volunteer for something that will probably get many of them snatched off the streets and sent back home, though. And that guest worker program? It doesn’t work.

Cutting off ag industry access to what’s euphemistically known as cross-border workers without giving them an alternative could cost the industry up to $9 billion in annual production, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Many economists say that access to cheap and illegal foreign labor actually puts more money into the average worker’s pocket. Citing most “cross-border” workers are employed at or below federal minimum wage guidelines by the agriculture industry, child care and meat and poultry processing – jobs almost universally shunned by Americans – frees those third and fourth generation Americans to pursue higher paying jobs.

It’s an unfortunate historical fact: as soon as a wave of new immigrants subsides and those that came over are acclimated into our society, they want to slam the door shut. Even a few second and third generation Mexican-Americans are calling for a border war. “I got mine, too bad you didn’t get yours, too,” is what they’re saying to their cousins who didn’t manage to tip-toe across the river 50 years ago.

Two outstanding examples of migrant worker prejudice: Pre-Civil war, it was the Irish who came here to escape famine. Pre-WWI, it was eastern Europeans escaping poverty and an impending war. Both groups were subjected to unbelievable prejudice and hate. Both groups were mired at the bottom of the economic scale in the beginning and boot-strapped their way to positions of influence and power. Until they gained some economic and political clout, though, they faced the same exclusionary tactics we’re seeing by large groups of still-unenlightened voters and their vote-seeking government representatives and senators.

So now we’re experiencing a huge influx of Mexicans and the messages being tossed about inside the beltway are the exact same messages our great-great grandparents spewed forth 150 years ago.

“Lynch ‘em!”

“Send ‘em back where they belong!”

“Toss the lot of them in jail and throw away the key!”

This time, those comments will be soon followed by, “What do you mean a head of lettuce is $25!?”

“I’ll be damned if I’ll pay $20 a pound for round steak.”

“All our food comes from Latin America these days. What’s happened to good, old American agriculture?”

It will have collapsed, of course, as unpicked crops rotted in the fields. The beginning stage of the collapse of the American agricultural economy is already visible on the near horizon. The threat of a crackdown on immigration is forcing some businesses to cross the Rio Grande to be where the assured work force is.

An Associated Press article quoted vegetable harvester and shipper Steve Scaroni of Arizona who said, "We just don't feel we can risk keeping all our eggs in the USA basket. We're competing in an international market. It's easy to say, 'raise wages', but the question is, will we stay in business?"

For the answer, stand on the north side of the river and peer into Mexico. What you’ll see is the same land that can handle the same Texas crops, from corn to cattle. What you can’t see is the huge number of willing workers who aren’t afraid to work “down on the farm.” It’s just that they won’t be able to get to American farms if the new House bill passes congress.

Want more proof? Look into the cities and towns that are on the south side of the river and you’ll see something called “maquiladoras,” production facilities owned and operated by major U.S. European and Japanese corporations. Management might be in Brownsville but the plant is in Matamoros to take advantage of the cheap labor.

Further down the road are Ford and Volkswagen plants. The Ford plant employs hundreds of people. Those jobs were in Dearborn, Michigan not to long ago and many of those now displaced American workers were of sturdy eastern European stock. Gustav, collecting an unemployment check in Stuttgart, is probably wondering what happened to his job, too.

Pass a bill that tries to limit or prevent the flow of workers into the U.S. today and read about the “Miracle of Mexico, the new economic boom south of the border,” in Time, Newsweek and Fortune magazine tomorrow. The boom will be fueled by a huge boost in their agricultural income as they become the bread basket of America, courtesy of the U.S. government.