ITHACA, N.Y. -- A study of five agricultural communities in New York state finds that Mexican immigrants comprise 95 percent of the fruits-and-vegetables agricultural workforce and that workers increasingly are choosing to settle with their families in these rural communities. 

In the recently published report, two Cornell University researchers observe that while this newly forming population is a potential boon to areas struggling with economic downturn, their ability to integrate into their new communities is key to their long-term success.

"The new host communities need to address the potential of the Mexican immigrants hitting an economic plateau," said Max Pfeffer, professor of development sociology in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) who co-authored the report, "Immigrants and the Community: Farmworkers with Families," with Pilar A. Parra, a research associate in the CALS Division of Nutritional Sciences. "For most Mexican immigrants in rural New York, their first foothold in the U.S. is through agriculture, but the true test for how they fare is what will happen to them after they settle outside the migrant labor stream and into more permanent farm and non-farm jobs," he said.

To encourage the future success of the new immigrants, and as part of a community-development strategy, the report concludes: "English language training should be a priority aimed at improving the lives of farmworkers. Such training is also likely to benefit communities where farmworkers settle and become self-reliant, productive and satisfied residents."

The report points out that migrant farmwork dropped from 85 to 40 percent in the 1990s and was replaced by more permanent or seasonal farmwork. This shift has led to a substantial increase in the number of farmworkers with families in the state. The researchers found that farmworkers with family present are twice as likely to understand, speak and write English, and they are generally more educated when compared with their counterparts without family nearby. Both of these factors play key roles in integrating farmworkers, both socially and economically, into community life.

Parra says, "Farmworkers have overwhelmingly said that they want to learn English and to become more culturally literate about the U.S. They feel they're at a disadvantage by not knowing these things. They see them as practical needs."

According to the researchers, the ability to speak English most directly influences the likelihood that farmworkers will enter the economic mainstream by working an off-season, non-farm job and opening a bank account. Of the 20 percent of Latino farmworkers with family present who had opened a bank account, 65 percent of them are classified as "self-reliant" -- a tag largely based on their ability to travel, communicate and attempt to gain services unaided. In terms of social integration -- defined as "the formation of relationships with community members who are neither Latinos nor farmworkers" -- the researchers again found English-language fluency to be the most important factor. Less than 20 percent of farmworkers who did not understand English had close American friends, while 60 percent of those able to understand English did. 

The report is the second in an anticipated series of four on the findings of a four-year study conducted in five communities throughout New York state located in Orange, Wayne and Orleans counties. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Fund for Rural America and is part of a larger effort to identify major population trends and their consequences in rural America.