(W&V) - Reforming U.S. immigration law may alleviate the shortage of available farm workers for the short term, but changing laws and opening up the border cannot change the reality that the immigrant labor pool is essentially running dry, according to an agricultural economics expert.

“The immigration debate in Washington, D.C., as it pertains to agriculture, continues to assume that immigration is the solution to the U.S. farm-labor problem,” said J. Edward Taylor, a professor and the director of Rural Economics and Pacific Rim at the University of California, Davis. “Our work strongly suggests that immigration reforms offer farmers a short-term, stopgap solution, at best.”

Mexico’s farm workforce declined by nearly 2 million people between 1995 and 2010, meanwhile average incomes steadily increased, birthrates decreased, and rural residents had better access to education. As Mexico becomes more affluent and better educated, its residents are leaving farm work at home and abroad. Far fewer (if any) Mexicans aspire to be seasonal farm workers in the United States, according to Taylor’s research.

Taylor will be discussing his work Tuesday during a seminar hosted by the Oregon Wine Research Institute from 3:30 p.m. until 5 p.m. on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis, Ore. A live stream of Taylor’s remarks will be available at live.oregonstate.edu.