There are a lot of farms out there that are using illegal immigrants to do jobs around the farm that otherwise wouldn't get done in the ultra-competive world of agriculture. Farm work gets little respect anymore, and therefore little pay for jobs we as a society choose to give to people we don't particularly like.

It's amazing when you start to look at the number of farms that use illegals to make work. Half of all people that work on farms in our country now are Hispanic, and three quarters of those people are illegal. The biggest minority group in many rural counties in New York is Hispanic, with the dominate group coming up from Mexico. We are seeing more and more immigrants, largely illegals working on even small farms.

Illegals used be cheap labor solely for mega-farms, but now small farms have had to adopt them to provide labor. This is part of the growing trend to corporationization of agriculture, in part represented not only by the growth of farm size, but also how even family farms have changed over the past decades. Where illegals one where exploited on the most appawling farms, they now are common place all voer.

We try to ignore these people. You only see them from time to time traveling Rural America, but largely they hide out in farm housing or at work in the fields, hiding from authorities. They live in fear only to help their families. Legalizing might bring them out of darkness, but it doesn't deal with why they needed: the lack of prestidge of farming or the poverty most farmers live in.

Until life improves on farms, and we start going back to the proud tradition of farming, illegals will be the norm. We might toughen penalities, or even decide to call such people legitimate, but that won't change the situation much. Real reform involves changing laws regarding hired help on farms, along with subsidy reform that ensures that more money goes to those small farms to allow them to pay living wages.

You have to feel for both the many farm families and their labors, either illegal or legal. Those people work hard, and in many times in conditions that need not exist except for the economic circumstances government puts them in. Too many people are working way too hard just to put food on the table, send a few bucks back home, or keep that Silverado truck they use on the farm. When we have a real farm policy, things will be a lot better on and off farm, and the draw of illegal immigration will greatly be reduced.