(Wines&Vines) - The wine industry’s labor problem isn’t going to get easier. But if federal lawmakers don’t enact some type of sensible immigration reform, it’s going to get much worse, according to an immigration law expert.

Speaking at a meeting of the Sonoma County Winegrowers, Monte Lake, an attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm CJ Lake, urged the county’s wine grape growers to contact their lawmakers in support of federal laws that would address the issues of skilled undocumented workers living in the country and overhaul the guest-worker program.

Lake gave the immigration reform update to more than 300 members of the growers group during a meeting held today at Santa Rosa Junior College’s Shone Farm near Santa Rosa, Calif.

 “We have a window here folks, a window, and if it goes down you’ll second-guess yourself, ‘What could I have done,’” Lake said.

Rare opportunity for reform

A lack of farm labor is crimping operations in nearly every segment of agriculture as well as dairy, livestock and food processing. The economic pressure is changing the view of conservative politicians, who had been treating immigration as a cultural issue rather than an economic one, Lake said.

Reform is needed, especially in California, because increased border security and drug cartel violence is deterring Mexicans from crossing the border to seek work in the United States.