But soon after she received legal status, the Mexican immigrant said goodbye to farm labor in favor of less difficult, better-paying jobs.

Will Rousseau, who farms in this community of nearly 6,700 about 10 miles west of Phoenix, couldn’t find enough workers this year. As a result, some of his broccoli and cabbage ended up rotting in the fields, unpicked.

Torres and Rousseau represent opposing arguments in a long-running debate over how to fix chronic farm-labor shortages, a debate that stretches from the vegetable fields and feedlots to every dinner table in America.

On one side are migrant farm workers who want legal status for undocumented immigrants as well as better wages and labor protections. On the other are farmers who want a stable and legal workforce that includes guest workers to harvest crops and do other types of farm work.

New legislation hopes to plow common ground.

A major provision in the immigration bill the Senate passed June 27 offers legal status to undocumented farm workers and creates a temporary-worker program to meet the labor demands of farmers with an incentive that could benefit both sides.

The agriculture-jobs provision was among the least controversial parts of the Senate bill, which also calls for billions more in spending on border security and a path to citizenship for many of the nation’s estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.

The agriculture-jobs provision did not generate as much controversy because general agreement among Republicans and Democrats is that farmers increasingly depend on immigrants to do farm work. Without them, both sides agree food prices could go up and more food may have to be imported as the result of labor shortages.

^“The only way we are going to be able to get them to stay is to provide incentives to stay,^”

— Maria Machuca, United Farm Workers

The provision also was based on a compromise hammered out beforehand by major groups representing farmers and farm workers.

Known as Ag-Jobs, the provision would let undocumented farm workers gain temporary legal status almost immediately. They make up about half of the nation’s 1 million to 1.2 million farm-labor force.

Those who remained in farm work would be able to apply for green cards in five years, half as long as undocumented immigrants not employed in farm jobs.

The agriculture provision also would create a new guest-worker program designed to provide farmers with a legal workforce instead of having to rely on undocumented immigrants to do jobs that Americans often don’t fill. The program would allow up to 337,000 workers from other countries to come to the U.S. to do farm work for three years.

The proposed temporary-worker program would replace the existing H2-A program, which most farmers don’t use because many consider it too costly and bureaucratic.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the "Gang of Eight" senators who crafted the legislation, said the agricultural-worker agreement was one of the most complicated parts of the bill to negotiate.

"In Yuma, (Ariz.,) you need people to pick lettuce for a certain number of months," McCain said. "In Alabama, they need people who render chickens 12 months a year. In the Northeast, you’ve got dairy farmers, which is a whole different category. There are so many different categories of workers that the Ag-Jobs part was really a tough part of it."

Migrant workers harvest watermelons June 25, 2013, in Buckeye, Ariz., about 40 miles west of Phoenix.(Photo: Nick Oza, The Arizona Republic)

He believes it will survive the House, too, given that the major stakeholders in the issue have signed off on it, he said.

"All sides really swallowed hard," McCain said.

Still, the farm-labor issue faces an uncertain future now that immigration debate has shifted from the Senate to the House, analysts say.

GOP leaders in the Republican-controlled House have decided not to take up the Senate’s version of the bill. Many House Republicans oppose it because they think it places undocumented immigrants on the path to citizenship before border security has been achieved.

Instead, GOP leaders want to take a different approach by tackling smaller pieces of the immigration issue one by one, including a separate, stand-alone agriculture-jobs bill, which already has been introduced.

But that piecemeal approach could doom any chance of passing such a bill, analysts say.

Members of the bipartisan Gang of Eight have said they won’t consider any piecemeal immigration legislation from the House.

And unlike the Senate bill, the House agriculture-jobs bill, introduced in April by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.,allows undocumented farm workers to get temporary visas but not green cards.

As a result, the House version is unlikely to pass because Democrats aren’t inclined to support a farm bill that doesn’t include a legalization program for undocumented farm workers, analysts say.

"This is absolutely not a done deal," said senior policy analyst Madeleine Sumption at the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington.

Workers needed

Rosa Torres was 17 when she crossed the border illegally from Mexico in 1986. She got a job picking squash on a farm in Carlsbad, Calif.

After a year, she was able to legalize her immigration status through the 1986 law that gave amnesty to more than 1 million undocumented farm workers. She said she earned about $180 to $200 a week, working 10 hours a day, or about $3.60 to $4 an hour. In all, she said she earned about $6,000 a year.

Four years later, in 1990, she got her green card, becoming a legal permanent U.S. resident. But Torres didn’t stay in farm work for long. She worked in the fields for a total of two years.

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Then, after taking a few years off from work because she had had two children, she got a job cleaning office buildings in Los Angeles. She moved to Phoenix in 2000 and now owns her own office-cleaning business with five employees. She earns about $28,000 a year.

Torres said she knows some undocumented farm workers, including several relatives, who stayed in farm work long after getting their green cards. But she knows many others who left after a few years for other types of jobs that paid better and weren’t as hard. That was quite common after the 1986 amnesty law.

"The minute you got (legal) status you were a free agent in the labor market. You could work anywhere," said Philip Martin, a professor at the University of California-Davis and an expert on farm labor and immigration. "Many who were farm workers got out pretty quick. People want higher wages and more stable employment."

The immigration bill the Senate passed is designed to avoid the mistakes of the 1986 bill.

It would let undocumented immigrants who did 100 days or 575 hours of farm work during the two years before Dec. 31, 2012, apply for new temporary work visas called "blue cards." To be eligible, undocumented farm workers could not have any serious criminal convictions. They alsowould have to pay a $100 fine and pass a background check.

To encourage farm workers who receive blue cards to stay in agriculture, the bill gives them a faster path to green cards.

Blue-card holders who worked in agriculture for at least 150 days a year for three years or 100 days a year for five years would be eligible to apply for green cards in five years.

That is half the time other undocumented immigrants would have to wait to apply for green cards under the Senate’s bill.

Blue-card holders also would have to pay a $400 fine and pass more background checks to get green cards.

The faster path to permanent residency, along with stronger labor protections included in the bill, would provide a strong incentive for undocumented farm workers to stay in agriculture even after they gain legal status, said Maria Machuca, communications director for United Farm Workers. The labor group helped negotiate the compromise agreement with farmers.

"The only way we are going to be able to get them to stay is to provide incentives to stay," she said.

However, the House version of the agriculture-jobs bill offers no quick path to legalization for undocumented farm workers.

They would be eligible to apply for temporary work visas only under a guest-worker program designed to help farmers meet labor demands — farmers such as Rousseau.

Getting the help

Rousseau grows produce in Tolleson and Scottsdale, Ariz., about 12 miles east of Phoenix, starting out with carrots, broccoli, cabbage and mixed greens in the winter; celery, onions and carrots in the spring and watermelons in June.

Every year it gets harder to find enough workers, Rousseau said.

His labor needs fluctuate depending on the season.

Late June was watermelon season at Delgado Farms in Buckeye, Ariz.(Photo: Nick Oza, The Arizona Republic)

He has about 200 employees who work on his farm year-round. But he needs more workers when planting season begins in August and September, and he employs about 400 to 500 in December when harvesting begins. The number drops back down to about 200 in July.

This past winter, Rousseau said he couldn’t find enough workers to harvest all of his broccoli and cabbage. He said he was short about 50 to 60 workers.

The amount of broccoli and cabbage that ended up rotting in the fields "wasn’t a significant amount," Rousseau said. "But it was significant because it never happened before."

Arizona has more than 10,000 full-time farming operations, said Kevin Rogers, president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. Ninety percent of the winter lettuce and greens consumed in the U.S. are grown in the Yuma area.

Some farmers in Arizona have had to reduce their acreage because they can’t find enough workers, he said.

Senior researcher Steven Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, think tank that is opposed to increasing levels of immigration, said farmers wouldn’t have to rely on immigrants if they were willing to pay Americans more to do farm work.

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"Once farmers get it in their heads that they are not going to be raising wages and treating workers better and partly mechanizing, then it does become a sort of self-fulling prophecy," Camarota said. "If you are going to pay $8 to $12 an hour to pick fruit or lettuce, or what have you, and you are not willing to pay more, then you are going to have trouble finding people."

Martin, the UC-Davis agriculture professor, said food prices wouldn’t rise significantly if farmers paid their workers more because only a small percentage of the cost of harvesting fruits and vegetables goes to pay workers’ wages.

The national average for farm workers is $10.50 an hour, according to United Farm Workers.

But Rogers said few Americans are willing to do farm work anymore, even at higher wages. Lettuce pickers in the Yuma area can earn as much as $20 an hour, he pointed out.

As a result, farmers increasingly have been forced to rely on immigrants. But a series of laws Arizona passed that crack down on immigrants in the U.S. illegally has made it even more difficult for farmers to find enough workers, Rogers said.

Employer-sanctions law cited

He pointed specifically to the state’s 2008 employer-sanctions law, which requires all employers in the state to use a federal computer system known as E-Verify to check whether every person they hire is legally eligible to work.

"I was talking to one feed-lot operator who said he was having to hire 10 to find one person that passes (E-Verify)," Rogers said.

Rogers said farmers are hoping Congress will pass an agriculture-jobs bill that will help provide a stable and legal workforce for farmers.

The Senate’s proposed guest-worker program would allow foreign workers to come to the U.S. for up to three years. The current H-2A program limits foreign workers to 10-month visas.

The proposal also would allow foreign workers to move from one employer to another once they arrived in the U.S. The current program prevents them from moving from one employer to another unless they return home first.

The House version would allow farm workers to move from one employer to another, but foreign workers employed in seasonal agriculture jobs would be allowed to stay for only up to 18 months. Those employed in non-seasonal work would be able to stay up to three years.

Rousseau said a new guest-worker program would help ensure that farmers have enough workers in the future. He acknowledged that many undocumented farm workers likely will move on to jobs in other industries after they receive legal status.

And even those who do stay in agriculture eventually will leave as they get older because farm work is so difficult.

But the immigration bill would provide the "mechanism to replenish those workers," he said.

Contributing: Dan Nowicki, The Arizona Republic