(Wine-Searcher) - A plan to legalize illegal farmworkers could be a boon for California vineyards and the wider agricultural industry.

In a move certain to raise the blood pressure of right-wingers outside the state, California's legislature is considering a bill that would allow illegal immigrants who work in agriculture to have work permits so they can stay.

Measure AB-20 would allow farmworkers, their spouses and children under 18 to stay without being deported. Felons and people with three misdemeanor convictions would not be eligible.

The bill passed the state assembly in June. It's now in the state senate and is scheduled to be voted on by the appropriations committee next month. Its remaining hurdles would be the full state senate and Governor Jerry Brown.

California considered similar legislation in 2012, but it was actually opposed by immigrant rights groups, as well as unions, and died on the vine. Those groups hoped that the federal government would pass a comprehensive national immigration reform law, which was being discussed at the time, and didn't want to muck it up with contradictory state laws.

But with the Republican Party now in control of both houses of the US Congress, there's no momentum there for immigration reform. So California, which produces a huge percentage of America's fruits and vegetables, is stepping up.

"We can't wait any longer," said Assemblyman Luis Alejo, who introduced the bill. "Our families back home, especially those working in agriculture, are suffering the most, with no solution in sight."

A Pew Research Center survey in 2012 estimated that 6.3 percent of California's population is unauthorized immigrants, tied with Texas for second-highest in the nation after Nevada (7.6 percent). Pew also estimates that 29 percent of California's agricultural workers are unauthorized immgrants – higher than every state but New Jersey and Washington.

It's worth noting that the most high-paying agricultural jobs – tending vineyards in Napa and Sonoma Counties – increasingly go to workers here legally.

"What used to be a migrant population that worked their way up the state, coming here after picking strawberries, that has changed totally," said Jennifer Putnam, executive director of Napa Valley Grapegrowers. "Now we have year-round work for them. The quality that people expect in wine is predicated on knowledgeable, skilled farmworkers. This is not rote commodity agriculture that we're doing here."

Putnam said Napa Valley Grapegrowers has taken no position yet on the California bill. But even Napa uses seasonal workers.

"We do have labor shortages. We have 45,000 acres of grapevines that all need to be picked within a six-week timeframe," Putnam said. "Even more compact is the pruning, which all needs to be done in January and February."

A 2005 study by United Farmworkers showed that 75 percent of US farmworkers were born in Mexico. There is a federal guest-worker program, called the H-2A visa, that allows foreign laborers into the US, but farmers' groups say it's near impossible to work with.

Most people born in America never consider doing farm work, even during a recession; maybe they read "The Grapes of Wrath".

"One of the directors on our farmworker foundation board runs a vineyard management company. He said not once in 30 years has a Caucasian walked through his door looking for a job," Putnam said. "Someone walks off the street, no English, they're going to get paid north of $14 an hour. But white people, black people – we just don't see it."

And even though California produces 60 percent of the wine consumed in the US, it's a drop in the bucket of California agriculture. Even after three years of drought, the state produces 90 percent of the broccoli in the US, 95 percent of the celery and garlic, 71 percent of the spinach and 69 percent of the carrots.