YAKIMA, Wash. — While much of the country frets about too many illegal immigrants, farmers in this famed apple-growing region east of the Cascade Range complain they can no longer find enough.
During the last two years, Yakima-area apple growers were so short of the migrant field hands they rely on to prune and pick their prized crop that a few brought in workers from Thailand.
Others said they never did find enough workers and watched in anguish as precious fruit was left dangling on trees.
This summer, with farmers expecting a bountiful apple crop, they also predict that the worker shortage will worsen, threatening a hand-harvesting industry valued at more than $1.5 billion in Washington state. In the last big-crop year, growers employed an estimated 42,300 seasonal apple workers, according to state officials.
"I hear people saying, 'We don't have enough workers now,' " said family apple farmer Larry Knudson. And April is a slow month, he added. "If that's now, what is it going to be like when we ratchet up our seasonal programs in June?"
The farmers' labor problems are at least partly due to the tightening of security along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. But they also illuminate a new reality: Illegal immigrants are increasingly shunning agricultural work in favor of better-paying opportunities in other bottom-rung occupations.
The employers who are hiring illegal immigrants away from farmers, notably in construction and manufacturing, also often pay poor wages for backbreaking tasks. But they offer steadier hours than seasonal farm work, which has served as the first job in America for countless newcomers over the last century.
"The trend line on labor supply -- it's going down," said Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League. "If a grower can have people that come into his or her ranch on their own dime, who show [citizenship] documents that appear to be legitimate, it's never going to get better than that. The alternative, guest-worker programs, is always going to be more expensive. But that's the only real alternative."
Citing field-hand shortages in communities such as Yakima, national agribusiness organizations are lobbying Congress for a dramatically expanded and simplified guest-worker program, arguing that constricting illegal immigration without ensuring an alternative supply of cheap labor would lead to economic ruin for many farmers.
