I spoke to a couple farmers this week about a bill that would grant New York farm workers the right to standard overtime pay. Currently farm workers are excluded from that labor protection.

Inevitably another issue came up — the labor shortage. Wayne Outhouse, of Outhouse Orchards in Croton Falls, said labor shortages were one reason for the downsizing of his operation over the years. He said the United States needed to give immigrant farm workers a chance to come legally or gain legal status.

“I always said, I can’t understand what’s making it so complicated to do figure out, to do something that’s so easy,” he said.

“You have to control it to a certain degree too, you can’t just let it run rampant,” he said. “I mean, what’s working now? Nothing’s working now. And to do that crazy idea of putting the fence up along the border isn’t going to work. You might as well … give all that money for that fence to give free health care to everybody.”

Pragmatic, bottom-line-oriented sentiments like his were the main theme sounded by pollsters who released a survey on attitudes toward immigration reform this week. Pollster Pete Brodnitz and Democratic strategist Celinda Lake said their research shows that the American public wants a solution to illegal immigration, and that mass deportations are not seen as an answer. Eighty-six percent of respondents favored what was described as an effort to secure the border, crack down on employers and “require illegal immigrants to register for legal immigration status, pay back taxes, and learn English in order to be eligible for U.S. citizenship.” (Note the word “require.”)

Lake, describing the sentiments emerging in focus groups, said Americans look favorably on a legalization bill because it would make all immigrants taxpayers. And people believe the timing is better now that the influx of immigrants is seen as slowing.

“If anything the economic climate has actually improved the environment for immigration reform, at least as far as the public is concerned,” she said in a conference call.

The Croton Falls farmer, meanwhile, was not terribly optimistic about his line of work.

“It gets to a point sometimes it doesn’t pay to grow things. If you can’t make money at it, what’s the sense of doing it?” he said. “I told all my kids to be schoolteachers.”

(Photo: Matthew Brown/The Journal News)