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The problem I see....if you went across Iowa, there are probably a minimum of 10,000 non-Americans who are in some work-support of Iowa-farmers. If you start messing with the system or making more difficult to hire basic help....it’ll put a lot of these farmers into a tough position and unable to ‘recruit’ or hire anyone to fill the job. My brother made the point a couple of years ago...that it’s hard to find anyone willing to work the chicken-business as a day-labor guy. Even if you offer $15 an hour...where do you find willing people to put in an eight-hour day....five days a week?

They need to come up with a more sustainable model that doesn't involve breaking the law.

Here’s the problem with this. If you go the legal and ethical route, then the ‘Juan’ you end up with, will require regular pay and social security/medicare. Maybe someone with insight to the pay business will jump into this discussion, but I would imagine the legal ‘Juan’ would cost you 30-percent more. You go and lay out the farm income and the man-hours required, and it’s a tough balancing act to survive as a farmer these days.

I do agree, we ought to go and operate a simple work-visa program where a ‘Juan’ does everything legal, has the paperwork, and the farmer can feel happy over the pay and work requirements. But I’ll add this comment...right now, it’s very possible that you’d end up with some Honduran kid who is 14 years old and you get in serious child-labor issues because of the open door mess and our approach to the whole worker concept.