Those of us advocating for secure borders and true immigration reform often argue that the massive influx of illegal aliens retards technological advancement in the agricultural industry and that farmers will develop cheaper, more efficient technology to compensate for the lack of available cheap labor.

I want to present to our readers a couple of articles dealing with the grapes and oranges.

Jim Ludwick, a friend of mine, is the leader of Oregonians for Immigration Reform (OFIR).  He sent this article to me and it also features extensive quotes from him.

Then last fall, [Ludwick] read in a local farming newspaper about the New Holland Braud harvester at Evergreen Vineyards in McMinnville. The aviation giant, which has vineyards adjacent to its aviation museum -- and a Spruce Goose wine label that honors its star attraction -- bought the machine for the 2006 harvest.

It picked 3.5 tons of pinot noir grapes in 20 minutes with three workers, the Capital Press article said. Usually that would have taken 34 workers an hour.

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"Give me a break," Capps said. "I defy anyone to distinguish handpicked grapes from the ones picked by these machines."

The second article features a San Diego company called Vision Robotics.

With the supply-and-demand equation uncertain, growers see the robots as a better option. "You can predict what it's going to cost to buy a machine and maintain it," says Baskin. "You can't predict the bargaining that we go through with contract labor," he says.

When a member of the California Citrus Research Board approached the company in 2004, [Vision Robotics CEO] Morikawa was doubtful that an effective robotic picker was even feasible. A citrus grower brought the skeptical engineers to an orange farm in California's fertile Central Valley, where they walked down the neat rows of trees and stared at the oranges hanging in the branches.

Previous attempts at making a mechanical harvester were thwarted by inefficiency, explains Morikawa. In the past, experimental machines approached a tree as a human would, picking one piece of fruit and then looking for the next. In this slow process, the machine circled the tree repeatedly until it was sure it had picked all the fruit.

Morikawa says his engineers had their breakthrough idea right there in the orange grove. They realized that the task could be divided between two robots: One would locate all the oranges, and the second would pick them. "Once you know where all the fruit is, then it becomes an easy job to calculate the most efficient way to pick it all," says Morikawa.

It absolutely boggles my mind when people refuse to admit that cheap labor retards long term technological advancement and ultimately keeps prices artificially higher.