Another reason why the US trade deficit keeps getting larger :
U.S. farmers go where workers are: Mexico
CELAYA, Mexico — Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw: full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.
Farming since he was a teenager, Scaroni, 50, built a $50 million business growing lettuce and broccoli in California's Imperial Valley, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexicans and many probably in the United States illegally.
But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now, about 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation.
The Department of Labor has reported that 53 percent of the 2.5 million farm workers in the United States are illegal immigrants, though growers and labor unions say as much as 70 percent of younger field hands are illegal.
Scaroni expects to recover his start-up costs because of the lower wages he pays farm workers here, $11 a day as opposed to about $9 an hour in California, although Mexican workers are less productive in their own country, he said.
"It's not a cake walk down here," he said. "At least I know the one thing I don't have to worry about is losing my labor force because of an immigration raid."
I was three pages behind! I should have caught up my reading before posting!!! I should have known you would answer this! My bad!!!!
