BEI Black Ice Blueberry Harvester

One argument that I've made about illegal immigration in the United States is that it isn't a case of illegals "doing the job that Americans won't do," but rather a de facto peasant class that drives wages down does more harm than good.

If illegal immigrants were barred from the agricultural sector, food prices wouldn't "rocket" as some have claimed.  Illegals only work in a few labour-intensive areas of farming and if they were replaced with standard wage workers, the increase in the average household's food budget, according to some estimates, would be about nine dollars a year.  This isn't enough to even be noticed by most consumers, but it would be enough of a spur to farmers to start investing in automation. If that were the case, we'd soon see yields go up and prices go down until illegal farm workers become a moot point because they'd never be able to compete.

A disincentive for foreigners to violate the border and more agriculture moving into the 21st century.  A win  win situation.

Robopicker

One side effect of the immigration debate in the United States is that fruit growers, nervous about their supply of cheap Latin American labour. are starting to look at robots to take up the slack.

I don't have much interest in the US immigration issue in general (Solving the problem of Mexican incursions is infinitely preferable to that of dealing with Jihadi-inclined Muslims), but it's a beautiful example of how technological change works. I have no doubt that if it weren't for the large influx of illegal workers, we'd have seen these machines being developed a generation ago.