American Apple Pie, but with out the American Apples

With Christmas around the corner, grocery stores are stocking up on all the must-haves of the holiday season. Items such as sweet potatoes, turkeys, green beans, and the like are being ordered in from across the country to satisfy Americans' stomachs. Before you take a spoonful of mashed potatoes, however, take a moment to think about where they cam from. If they aren't instant mashed potatoes, then they came from a farm, probably in the US. And who harvested these potatoes? Probably not the farmer, unless they happen to be organic, then the likelihood of being handpicked by the grower increases but isn't guaranteed. Most likely this potato was picked by hand, by an immigrant worker. According to farmers' own estimates, about 70 percent of the 1.2 million hired workers tilling fields and picking crops are illegal immigrants.
The United States agricultural community of today is in a position where it can NOT function without illegal immigrants. Right now there is a shortage of this labor force due to the tighter border control and the push for deporting all illegal immigrants. This nation can not afford to lose the immigrants because there is no one to replace them. There are countless tales where farmers who advertised for workers received little or no response to there ads. Americans do not want to do the work that these illegal immigrants are willing to do. As for the suggestions to replace the illegal immigrant work force with prisoners, a domestic work force, and/or machines is unrealistic and doomed to fail for a number of reasons. The solution needed is a way to let illegal immigrants become legal through a legal process. A certain program named AgJOBS can do this, however it is currently at a standstill in Congress. This country needs illegal immigrants, if: it wants its farms to stay on American soil, its economy to not crash, and its apples for its American pie to stay American apples.