title: Harvest of confusion:  immigration reform and California agriculture.
abstract: "Agriculture was a major stumbling block to immigration reform [in the United States], largely because Congress was unwilling to assign explicit priorities to the competing goals of protecting American workers and admitting supplemental immigrant farmworkers.  This article describes the Special Agricultural Worker or SAW legalization program that generated 700,000 applications in California and the hypothetical calculations required to determine whether Replenishment Agricultural Workers or RAWs will be admitted to the United States to do farmwork.  The paper concludes that immigration reform did not resolve the century-old debate over agriculture's 'need' for alien workers; instead, SAWs and RAWs have contributed to the harvest of confusion on farm labor."
authors.forename: P L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Martin
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D000569:Americas; D002140:California; D003710:Demography; D019049:Developed Countries; D004467:Economics; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D004651:Employment; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006280:Health Workforce; D009656:North America; D011153:Population; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011640:Public Policy; D014171:Transients and Migrants; D014481:United States
keywords: Agricultural Workers; Americas; California; Demographic Factors; Developed Countries; Economic Factors; Evaluation; Human Resources; Labor Force; Labor Migration; Manpower Needs; Migration; Migration Policy; North America; Northern America; Policy; Population; Population Dynamics; Population Policy; Social Policy; United States