EFFECTS OF THE IMMIGRATION CONTROL REFORM ACT OF 1986 ON FARM LABOR CONTRACTING
Many crops in California are labor intensive in character. Typically, agricultural production in these labor intensive crop areas are heavily dependent on immigrant labor.1 Any disequilibrium introduced into the agricultural labor force, therefore, tends to affect agricultural producers through changes in the conditions associated with labor use.2 The Immigration Control Reform Act holds the potential to introduce disequilibrium into the agricultural labor market in the United States.3
This research is concerned specifically with the type and magnitude of the effects on farm labor contracts in California that may be expected from the Immigration Control Reform Act of 1986. Considering that the Immigration Control Reform Act of 1986 was enacted in November of 1986, it might at first appear that speculation concerning the effects of the Act on farm labor contracts would not be necessary; that, rather, actual effects could be measured and reported. That case, however, does not apply in this instance.
1V. A. Canto, and F. E. Udwadia, "The Effect of Immigration Quotas on the Average Quality of Migrating Labor and Income Distribution," Southern Economic Journal, 52 (January 1986): 785 793.
2G. D. Thompson, and P. L. Martin, "Immigration Reform and the Agricultural Labor Force," Labor Law Journal, 42 (August 1991): 544 545.
3V. M. Briggs, Jr., "Non Immigrant Labor Policy in the United States," Journal of Economic Issues, 17 (September 1983): 609 630.
Although the process required years, the United States government at long last learned that the federal government in the United States cannot effectively influence the behavior of non citizens of the United States who desire to illegally immigrate into the country. For years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service participated in a merry go round in which the Service intercepte...