Number of undocumented farm workers in California falling

Eduardo Porter reported for the New York Times a few days ago under the headline, "Illegal Immigration is Down, Changing the Face of California Farms."  Here's an excerpt about the "decline in the supply of young illegal immigrants from Mexico, the backbone of the work force picking California’s crops since the 1960s."

The new demographic reality has sent farmers scrambling to bring in more highly paid foreign workers on temporary guest-worker visas, experiment with automation wherever they can and even replace crops with less labor-intensive alternatives.

“Back in the day, you had people galore,” said Vanessa Quinlan, director of human resources at Sabor Farms. These days, not so much: Some 90 percent of Sabor’s harvest workers come from Mexico on temporary visas, said Jess Quinlan, the farm’s president and Ms. Quinlan’s husband. “We needed to make sure we had bodies available when the crop is ready,” he said.

For all the anxiety over the latest surge in immigration, Mexicans — who constitute most of the unauthorized immigrants in the United States and most of the farmworkers in California — are not coming in the numbers they once did.

There are a variety of reasons: The aging of Mexico’s population slimmed the cohort of potential migrants. Mexico’s relative stability after the financial crises of the 1980s and 1990s reduced the pressures for them to leave, while the collapse of the housing bubble in the United States slashed demand for their work north of the border. Stricter border enforcement by the United States, notably during the Trump administration, has further dented the flow.