Beginning last January, California farmers posted harvesting jobs in fields and orchards across the state, open to U.S. citizens and legal residents. An Associated Press investigation found that of 1,160 positions posted, only 233 people applied, despite publicity from unemployment offices in four states.

Last June, the United Farm Workers of America invited unemployed Americans to apply for farming jobs online. After 3 million Web hits and 8,600 applications, only seven pursued training and got hired.

Even when Americans agreed to do the work, farmers often found them ill-suited for the job, citing absenteeism problems or new hires immediately asking for time off. Some didn't even know how to plant the plants.

Surprise! Picking produce is a skill, and it's hard work.

While less than 5 percent of America's illegal immigrant population works in agriculture, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, in California, about 70 percent of the state's 425,000 farmworkers are here illegally. If Americans won't do those jobs, who will? That's a vital question given California's status as the nation's largest farm state, with agriculture a $38 billion industry annually, providing half the nation's produce.

Yet, tighter border controls launched in 2006 reduced the immigrant labor pool by 20 to 30 percent. Farmers told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that they had to abandon fields of strawberries, broccoli and other crops because there was no one to pick the produce.

That same year, the New York Times recounted heartbreaking stories of pear farmers in Lake County losing hundreds of tons and millions of dollars because they couldn't find enough pickers – despite offering $150 for a seven-hour day.

In today's leaner employment environment, you'd think people would be clamoring for that kind of pay, but my cynical side wonders, "Why spend seven hours picking strawberries for 20 bucks an hour when you can sit around and do nothing for $300 a week on unemployment insurance?"

What does it say about the American worker who won't drive to an orchard job in Yuba City because it's not worth the pay while someone from Mexico risks his life to travel hundreds of miles across uncompromising terrain and brutal heat for that very same job. Which person would you hire?

A smart program providing legal pathways for migrant workers to commit to agricultural work here would solve the problem. But the seasonal guest-worker program known as H-2A doesn't work for California's diverse farming environment. It requires farmers to apply well in advance for relatively small numbers of foreign workers for fixed time periods. Who can predict the timing of a harvest season that accurately, and with only a two- to three-week window for harvest, who can afford to be wrong?

Efforts by lawmakers like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to create new farmworker programs that would meet California's agricultural needs have failed, or are stalled, like the AgJOBS bill comedian Steven Colbert plugged in a much-publicized Capitol Hill appearance last month. Opponents of such legislation often argue that farms should employ Americans and legal residents instead of the undocumented, especially during a time of high unemployment.

Attention, opponents: Americans don't want those jobs, even in times of high unemployment.

The recession has provided enough workers for now, but a sense of crisis prevails among growers who rely on immigrant labor. They worry about further crackdowns and raids scooping up illegal workers on their farms, which would put most farmers out of business. When the economy rebounds, they'll lose laborers to higher-paying jobs in construction (where stories abound of Americans losing jobs to illegal immigrants, though precise data are unavailable).

As a result, increasing numbers of farmers have begun raising crops across the border where the work force is stable, abundant and cheap. Feinstein's office says that between 2007 and 2008, 1.56 million acres of farmland were shut down in the United States, and American farmers have moved at least 84,155 acres of production and 22,285 jobs to Mexico to grow crops there that used to be grown here.

That reality hurts American jobs elsewhere, from local economies in farming towns, to truckers and dock workers transporting produce nationwide and around the world. I don't know about you, but I like supporting American farmers and I like our food safety and health protections, many of which don't exist in places like China.

The California Farm Bureau says half our garlic now comes from China, not Gilroy. China now produces eight times the table grapes we do in the United States. Peru has become an asparagus capital, and we've all seen berries grown in Chile.

Bottom line: Foreigners will be involved in the cultivation and distribution of our produce no matter what. We need to decide: Do we want them to do it here or there?

          
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Bruce Maiman