The federal government is finally trying to regain control of our borders, but no sooner has the effort gotten serious than the cry has gone up from California agribusiness that if it can no longer rely on a steady stream of undocumented farm workers, the crops will rot in the fields.

Their claim is false. The U.S Commission on Immigration Reform chaired by Barbara Jordan had it exactly right. It rejected the century-old claim of agribusiness that it must bring in temporary foreign farm workers to harvest our fruits and vegetables, and instead concluded that an agricultural guest worker program "is not in the national interest and . . . would be a grievous mistake."

The suggestion that there is an impending shortage of U.S. farm workers is a falsehood foisted on the public and policy-makers by agricultural employers who prefer non-U.S. farm workers. Guest workers, no less than the undocumented, are virtually powerless to prevent inhumane and illegal wages and working conditions because they are fired and deported if they challenge those abuses. Let's examine the facts. Numerous studies of the agricultural labor market since enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 have found, without exception, a surplus of agricultural labor, evidenced by massive unemployment and underemployment among farm workers. Farm workers average only 31 weeks of work annually and earn only $6,000 per year. Any effort to increase the labor supply would further impoverish American farm workers and reduce the labor costs of agricultural employers, which is the growers' precise purpose in seeking a new guest worker program.

Growers insist that the removal of undocumented workers from agriculture, through tougher enforcement of the law barring the employment of persons illegally in the United States, will create shortages. If true, this is an open acknowledgment of what we all know: Agribusiness has violated immigration laws by employing thousands of undocumented workers. This, despite the special treatment it got in 1986 when Congress created a special seasonal agricultural worker program.

Significantly, a Department of Labor survey found that most of the seasonal workers in the 1986 program have stayed in agriculture. Some have left because of terrible wages and working conditions, but the way to rectify that situation is for the growers to compete for their labor by improving wages and conditions.