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  3. American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now. Given a multi-year decline in illegal immigrati

American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now. Given a multi-year decline in illegal immigrati

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问题    American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now. Given a multi-year decline in illegal immigration, and a similarly sustained pickup in the U. S. job market, the complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm workers.
   Congress has obstructed efforts to create a more straightforward visa for agricultural workers that would let foreign workers stay longer in the U. S. and change jobs within the industry. If this doesn’t change, American businesses, communities, and consumers will be the losers.
   Perhaps half of U. S. farm laborers are undocumented immigrants. As fewer such workers enter the country, the characteristics of the agricultural workforce are changing. Today’s farm laborers, while still predominantly born in Mexico, are more likely to be settled rather than migrating and more likely to be married than single, They’re also aging. At the start of this century, about one-third of crop workers were over the age of 35, now more than half are. And picking crops is hard on older bodies. One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it’s been all along: Native U. S. workers won’t be returning to the farm.
   Mechanization is not the answer, either—not yet, at least. Production of corn, cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat has been largely mechanized, but many high-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms, where robots do a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they’re automated.
   As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the workforce. Starting around 2012, requests for the visas rose sharply; from 2011 to 2016 the number of visas issued more than doubled.    The H-2A visa has no numerical cap, unlike the H-2B visa for nonagricultural work, which is limited to 66,000 a year. Even so, employers complain they aren’t given all the workers they need. The process is cumbersome, expensive, and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led the average H-2A worker to arrive on the job 22 days late. The shortage is compounded by federal immigration raids, which remove some workers and drive others underground.
   Petitioning each year for laborers—and hoping the government provides enough, and that they arrive on time—is no way to run a business. In a 2012 survey by the California Farm Bureau, 71 percent of tree-fruit growers and nearly 80 percent of raisin and berry growers said they were short of labor. Some western growers have responded by moving operations to Mexico. Without reliable access to a reliable workforce, more growers will be tempted to move south.
   According to a report by the Partnership for a New American Economy, Americans are consuming more fresh produce, which is good. But a rising share of it is grown elsewhere. From 1998 to 2000, 14. 5 percent of the fruit Americans consumed was imported. Little more than a decade later, the share of imported fruit had increased to 25. 8 percent. Rural U. S. communities that might have benefited didn’t.
   In effect, the U. S. can import food or it can import the workers who pick it. The U. S. needs a simpler, streamlined, multi-year visa for agricultural workers, accompanied by measures to guard against exploitation and a viable path to U. S. residency for workers who meet the requirements. Otherwise growers will continue to struggle with shortages and uncertainty, and the country as a whole will lose out.
Which of the following could be the best title for this text?
选项 A、U. S. Agriculture in Decline?
B、Import Food or Labor?
C、America Saved by Mexico?
D、Manpower vs Automation?
答案B
解析 原文第一段明确指出美国农民面临劳动力短缺的问题，而这一问题的根源在于针对农场工人的移民制度。第二段和第三段分析了移民签证和移民现状的冲突。第四段指出机械化并不能解决该问题。第五、六段分析了现在农场工人所依赖的H-2A签证政策也没能有助于解决劳动力短缺。第七、八段通过研究调查再次确定了劳动力短缺的问题。最后一段总结指出解决方案，美国要么进口食品，要么进口农场劳动力，并且labor为本文重复出现的主题词，所以B项最符合题意。A项中的decline夸大概念，C项中的saved属于无中生有，D项中的automation属于断章取义，并且与原文表述相反，排除ACD项。故选B。
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