I spent a week in California wine country recently and learned that grapes can be harvested with machinery. You can probably guess why vintners use illegals instead of machinery to pick the grapes . . . the vintners grow far richer by using illegals (subsidized by us taxpayers).

The grape-picking machine needs more space than illegals need to walk down the rows between the vines. By using illegals, the vintners can plant more grapes and make more money. Some years ago, the rows of vines used to be planted wider apart when machinery was used instead of illegals.

As far as I'm concerned, there are far too many grapes grown in the USA, yet more and more vines are continually being planted just about everywhere imagineable.

This would be a much better scenario for our country and for the average taxpayer: require the vintners to use machinery rather than illegtals to pick the grapes (and other agricultural products), get rid of the illegals, cut the profits of the vintners/agriculturists and import more wine from abroad. Simple solution, but what politician would dare suggest it?

Duh