2019年考研英语二阅读 Text 3 原文翻译及答案解析

American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years. The complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm workers.

美国农民多年来一直在抱怨劳动力短缺。如果不彻底改革农业工人的移民规则，这些抱怨不太可能停止。

Congress has obstructed efforts to create a more straightforward visa for agricultural workers that would let foreign workers stay longer in the U. S. and change jobs within the industry. If this doesn't change, American businesses, communities, and consumers will be the losers.

国会阻碍了为农业工人创建更直接签证的努力，这种签证会让外国工人在美国停留更长时间并在行业内更换工作。如果这一点不改变，美国企业、社区和消费者将成为输家。

Perhaps half of U. S. farm laborers are undocumented immigrants. As fewer such workers enter the country, the characteristics of the agricultural workforce are changing. Today ' s farm laborers, while still predominantly born in Mexico, are more likely to be settled rather than migrating and more likely to be married than single. They 're also aging. At the start of this century, about one-third of crop workers were over the age of 3 5. Now more than half are. And picking crops is hard on older bodies. One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it' s been all along : Native U. S. workers won't be returning to the farm.

或许一半的美国农场工人是无证移民。随着这类工人进入美国的数量减少，农业劳动力的特征正在改变。如今的农场工人，虽然仍主要出生在墨西哥，但更可能定居而非迁移，更可能已婚而非单身。他们也在老龄化。本世纪初，约三分之一的农作物工人年龄超过35岁。现在超过一半。而且采摘农作物对年长身体来说很困难。一种常被讨论的劳动力短缺解决方案仍然一如既往地不可信：美国本土工人不会回到农场。

Mechanization isn't the answer, either — not yet, at least. Production of com, cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat has been largely mechanized, but many hi gh-value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. Even dairy farms, where robots do a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they 're automated.

机械化也不是答案——至少目前还不是。玉米、棉花、水稻、大豆和小麦的生产已经基本机械化，但许多高价值、劳动密集型作物，如草莓，需要劳动力。即使是乳品农场，机器人只承担一小部分挤奶工作，要实现自动化还有很长的路要走。

As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the workforce. Starting around 20 12, requests for the visas rose sharply; from 20 11 to 20 16 the number of visas issued more than doubled.

因此，农场越来越依赖使用H-2A签证的临时客工来填补劳动力缺口。大约从2012年开始，签证申请急剧上升；从2011年到2016年，发放的签证数量翻了一倍多。

The H-2A visa has no numerical cap, unlike the H-2B visa for nonagricultural work, which is limited to 66,000 a year. Even so, employers complain they aren't

H-2A签证没有数量上限，不像用于非农业工作的H-2B签证，后者每年限制在66,000个。即便如此，雇主们抱怨他们没有得到

given all the workers they need. The process is cumbersome, expensive, and unreliable. One survey found that bureaucratic delays led the average H-2A worker to

他们所需的所有工人。这个过程繁琐、昂贵且不可靠。一项调查发现，官僚主义的延误导致平均H-2A工人

arrive on the job 22 days late. The shortage is compounded by federal immigration raids, which remove some workers and drive others underground.

迟到22天才到达工作岗位。联邦移民突击行动加剧了短缺，这些行动移除了一些工人，并迫使其他工人转入地下。

In a 20 12 survey, 7 1 percent of tree-fruit growers and almost 80 percent of raisin and berry growers said they were short of labor. Some western farmers have responded by moving operations to Mexico. From 1998 to 2000, 14.5 percent of the fruit Americans consumed was imported. Little more than a decade later, the share of imp orts was 25.8 percent.

在2012年的一项调查中，71%的果树种植者和近80%的葡萄干和浆果种植者表示他们劳动力短缺。一些西部农民通过将业务转移到墨西哥来应对。从1998年到2000年，美国人消费的水果中有14.5%是进口的。仅仅十多年后，进口份额达到25.8%。

In effect, the U. S. can import food or it can import the workers who pick it.

实际上，美国可以进口食物，或者进口采摘食物的工人。