New push for illegal alien "guest worker" amnesty.
ITEM: "Harvest havoc is predicted for this fall," warned the headline of a California Central Valley Business Times story for August 24, 2007. The CVBT story reported that the agriculture business lobby was pushing for revival of the Ag JOBS proposal included in the immigration bill that stalled in...

The 4 Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters.
Most of Bryan Caplan's points ("The 4 Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters," October) are well-taken. But I am a bit perplexed by his lumping of anti-free-trade views and anti-immigration views into a single "anti-foreign bias." I am well aware of the economic arguments in favor of free...

Unmanned robot tractor uses RTK-GPS and attitude sensor.
The efforts to develop automated or autonomous guidance systems for agricultural vehicles are motivated by the decrease in the farm labor force and the desire for higher production, greater efficiency, and safer operations. An unmanned agricultural tractor using RTK-GPS and a fiber optical gyroscope-based attitude sensor has...

The Bracero Program.
George W. Bush's guest worker proposal brings back memories for many Mexican farmworkers known as braceros. (Bracero, or "arm man," comes from the Spanish word brazo, for "arm.") During World War II (1939-1945), the governments of the United States and Mexico signed the Mexican Farm Labor Program...

Protecting the "white citizen worker": race, labor, and citizenship in South-Central Arizona, 1929-1945.
In June 1930, the Arizona State Federation of Labor (ASFL) called for new restrictions on Mexican immigration in order to protect the status of "white citizen workers of Arizona and other Southwestern states." (1) Arizona's trade unions had repeatedly pressed for anti-immigration legislation over the previous two decades, and...

From beer to money: labor exchange and commercialization in eastern Uganda.
Abstract: This paper discusses how labor exchange and social ties among the Sabiny in eastern Uganda have changed with increased commercialization in the area. It explains the rationale for the original "beer party system" and how labor exchanges associated with this system have been transformed in the light of...

The true cost of "cheap" labor: the costs associated with uncontrolled immigration and flooding the U.S. job market with foreign, low-wage laborers far outweigh any savings to be gained.
One of the great myths of the immigration debate is that American workers will not do the types of jobs currently being filled in large part by illegal immigrants. A corollary to this train of thought is that the historically unprecedented levels of immigration, much of it illegal, benefits...

Everyone had cameras: photographers, photography and the farmworker experience in California--a photographic essay.
"Cesar Chavez really knew the value of photography .... He was very visually aware. I don't think he did anything during the first year of the strike without considering how it would look on film. To an extent that few realized, much of what the National Farm Worker Association...

Owen Whitfield and the gospel of the working class in new deal America, 1936-1946.
WHEN IN APRIL 1932 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT spoke of "the forgotten man," he was not referring to an African American sharecropper named Owen Whitfield. (1) However, by decade's end, Roosevelt would sit down with Whitfield in the White House to discuss the plight of southern tillers of...

The unfinished work of agricultural and biological engineering.
As the lighted time ball dropped over Times Square in New York City on New Year's Eve to usher in 2007 and to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of this most famous of all public time-telling traditions, the event, unbeknownst to many, also marked the passage of the centenary of...