Page 32 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

“The pace of unauthorized immigration from Mexico has slowed substantially,” ERS writes.
“Several scholars of Mexican migration have concluded that unauthorized immigration from

Mexico is no longer keeping pace with the
rate at which unauthorized immigrants are
returning to Mexico. Between 2007 and
2015, the estimated number of unauthorized
immigrants from Mexico living in the United
States declined from 6.9 million to 5.6
million—a decline of 19%.”
Phillip Martin, farm labor economist at UC
Davis, says the current worker shortage is
threatening U.S. agriculture and the stakes
are high.
“Today’s race in the fields will determine
whether Americans will consume more
imported produce or whether fruits and
vegetables will continue to be grown in the United States and picked by machines or guest
workers,” Martin writes in a new paper titled The race in the fields: Imports, machines and
migrants.

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