Immigrant workers are important to U.S. agriculture. The four articles in this set explore the impacts of immigrant workers, legal or illegal, on various aspects of U.S. agriculture, along with rural labor markets. A number of policy implications are also covered.

We use a new data set to examine how the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Immigration Reform and Control Act affected the flow of labor from rural Mexico to U.S. agriculture. Contrary to expectations, we find that both policies increased migration and temporarily offset the long-term trend of decreasing migration to U.S. farms.

Most farm workers, and almost all new entrants to the farm workforce, are immigrants, most of whom are not authorized to work in the United States. There is a risk of an abrupt change in the availability and cost of labor in rural America with immigration reform.

Economic research indicates that Americans benefit from the abundance of low-skilled workers immigration provides, especially to agriculture, and that employers are sufficiently flexible to absorb immigrants without greatly reducing low-skilled Americans' employment or wages. This bodes well for the economy's ability to adapt to looming changes in immigration policy.

Potential changes in immigration policy are suggested to have minimal effects on farm wage rates beyond elimination of a wage penalty for unauthorized workers. The minimal wage effects result from producer adjustments in technology and crop mix, and from increased trade in labor-intensive agricultural products.