Farm worker demonstrates use of "levitate broccoli" charm

From the front page of today's New York Times. Some farmers are getting around the immigration issue by moving their farms to Mexico:

CELAYA, Mexico — Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw: full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.

Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50 million business growing lettuce and broccoli in the fields of California, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexican and many probably in the United States illegally.

But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation.

“I’m as American red-blood as it gets,” Mr. Scaroni said, “but I’m tired of fighting the fight on the immigration issue.”

A sense of crisis prevails among American farmers who rely on immigrant laborers, more so since immigration legislation in the United States Senate failed in June and the authorities announced a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants. An increasing number of farmers have been testing the alternative of raising crops across the border where there is a stable labor supply, growers and lawmakers in the United States and Mexico said.

If the labor can't come here, the business can always go there. That's called capitalism, folks. Let's please figure out a sensible and fair process whereby people can come to this country and work and eventually get citizenship. I know that's very difficult given the xenophobic frenzy the Republicans have whipped themselves into (witness McCain's campaign cratering because he's not sufficiently frightened of people with dark skin). But the problem isn't going away.