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of the Western Growers Association, whose three thousand members in California and Arizona generate half of the nation’s fresh produce, tells me that in recent years a number of large-scale growers have relocated some of their operations south of the border, in places like Mexicali Valley, Caborca, and Baja. “There’s a quiet exodus going on already, tens of thousands of acres and millions of dollars in economic activity,” says Chelling. “Growers are saying, ‘If you won’t give me a legal labor force here, then I’ll go where the labor force is legal.’ ”

This isn’t about immigrants displacing Americans in the labor force. It’s about foreign workers coming here to fill jobs that the natives don’t want because they’ve got better opportunities. Regarding agriculture, foreigners are going to do the work in any case. It’s just a question of whether the jobs and attendant economic activity are generated here or somewhere else. The reality is that U.S. companies will either grow food domestically that is harvested by foreign workers, or import food harvested by foreign workers.

AUTOMATION NATION?

Some have argued that the availability of cheaper immigrant labor harms productivity by delaying automation in certain industries. “By not enforcing the immigration laws,” says agriculture economist Philip Martin, “the government is sending a signal to farmers that by hiring unauthorized workers they do not have to make a transition to a more mechanized, higher productive agriculture.” In a 2001 study, Martin said that the termination of the Bracero Program for Mexican guest-workers in 1964 led to the automation of tomato picking. “In the tomato case,” he concluded, “the end of the Bracero Program led to the mechanization of the tomato harvest, expanding production, and a reduction in the price of processed tomato products, which helped to fuel the fast-food boom.”

Martin and others are right to note that immigration has slowed mechanization in certain sectors of the economy. But their argument presupposes that every activity that can be automated should be, as if the most efficient course is to keep all manual workers outside of developed countries. Does the availability of cashiers retard technological innovations in the retail sector that could produce universal self-service checkout? Not necessarily. To use Martin’s example, time and money spent trying to come up with machines to duplicate a low-skill human activity could have been directed at other improvements, such as developing healthier varieties of tomatoes (rather than varieties that can be recognized by machines). Furthermore, the tomatoes are still being picked by machines at a higher cost than if you allowed a sizeable number of guest-workers to do the job—and with no clear economic gain for Americans. Foreign workers who are less productive in their home countries could be more productive here. And unlike the machines, immigrants not only pick produce but also consume products and services, thus helping the U.S. economy expand.

Another politically popular argument is that sealing the southern border and giving Mexican immigrants the boot would be a boon to low-skilled Americans. You will not search the academic literature in vain for studies showing that immigrants dampen the labor market outcomes of the lowest-skilled natives. But neither will you find an abundance of research that comes to that conclusion. It’s true that these immigrants compete most directly with U.S. natives who lack a high school degree. But it’s also true that the percentage of Americans so educated has been sharply declining in absolute terms for decades. Keep in mind, too, that even absent competition from foreign workers, this group would still have to compete for jobs in a marketplace that increasingly places a premium on skills.

The pinup economist for immigration hawks is Harvard’s George Borjas, whose research has found that high immigration is associated with slower wage growth among lower-skilled native workers. Borjas doesn’t argue that foreign workers “steal” jobs and even concedes