Will Immigrant Reform Lead to Higher Food Prices?

Thanks to Justin Stoler for linking me to an NPR story today about the potential effect of immigration reform on migrant farm workers. As he suggested to me, there is a lot to chew on here. The basic issue is this: farmers exploit undocumented farm workers, especially in terms of low wages. Those low wages translate into lower prices for domestically-grown food than we would otherwise pay, since it highly unlikely that the farmers themselves are going to absorb the difference. Given that widely acknowledged exploitation, will legalization encourage workers to leave agriculture and find other jobs? The NPR piece is wobbly on this score, and there are several reasons for this.

The last time we had a major legalization of undocumented immigrants--under Ronald Reagan--we were still in the pre-9/11 era when there was pretty easy mobility across the U.S.-Mexico border, so people leaving agriculture for higher-paying jobs were pretty quickly replaced by new waves of undocumented workers, but ones who came and went as the demand ebbed and flowed. The post-9/11 era, in which the border really is much more secure, and in which the birth rate has dropped considerably in Mexico, does not necessarily insure that there will be a new wave of people to replace those leaving agriculture. What about guest worker programs? These tend to work only in repressive societies such as Saudi Arabia where the government really will round people up and deport them when their contract ends. Furthermore, as the story points out, guest workers are also routinely exploited, despite working legally, so we don't get rid of that issue. 

Why can't farmers just pay their workers more and then charge more for their food? The problem, as the story notes, is competition from Mexico and Central America, where farm workers are also exploited and where, in all events, wages are even lower than in the U.S. 

If you follow through the logic of this story, it seems to me that (a) legalization will lead to a high fraction of current workers leaving agriculture to find higher pay elsewhere; (b) this will change the farming industry in California where many growers are already switching to almonds because they require less labor; (c) leading to more imported food, (d) which will keep food prices low in the U.S., but will be bad for the U.S. trade deficit. In the end, though, the only real argument for immigration reform is that we simply shouldn't be exploiting undocumented immigrants as we do. There will be consequences, not all good, but we will have to adjust to that new reality.