Depending on immigrant labor

Harsh crackdown on illegals could harm farm-related economies. Laws needed Lower labor costs

Gil Smart

On Route 41, just a few miles east of the the Lancaster-Chester County line, are two Mexican restaurants, seemingly out of place in so rural a community.

A short distance down the road, however, is a mushroom farm, one of many in southwestern Chester County.

The latter has everything to do with the former.

In 2004, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that up to 25,000 Mexicans live in Chester County. Not all of them work on mushroom farms, but Pennsylvania's mushroom industry produces roughly half of the nation's crop; the need for labor is great, and Mexicans, according to a 1997 report by Indiana University of Pennsylvania, make up a majority of the work force.

It is but one example of many that illustrate how important immigrant laborers are to Pennsylvania's food economy. And as immigration reform proposals wend their way slowly through Congress, Pennsylvania food growers and processors are watching closely, and nervously.

In Lancaster County, immigrant workers, some of them …