People always have the impression of Wisconsin farms as being family-owned, where mom and pop toil away for decades to make ends meet.  It’s not very often that you hear farms thrown into the illegal immigrant debate – yet without migrant labor, Wisconsin farms could be facing tough times.

Thus, agriculture groups are lining up to oppose a mandate for an “E-Verify” system at the federal level. Under the legislation, which has already gotten a hearing in the U.S. House, all employers would be mandated to check immigration status of their workers using a system that has a questionable track record, and face consequences if it doesn’t work.

Farmers are questioning the ramifications of this type of legislation because without broader immigration reform, a federal mandate to implement E-Verify would push some laborers to work for cash outside the tax system or ship agriculture jobs overseas.  If that were the case, the U.S. would almost certainly have to import more of its food supply, and food costs would rise.

Everyone already knows China owns most of our debt – do they need to supply all of our cucumbers now, too?