One of the arguments put forth in opposition to Alabama's tough new law against illegal immigration is that it is reducing the number of workers available to pick crops and do other jobs on farms in the state.
Mindful of that concern -- and obviously not wanting to harm Alabama's important agriculture industry -- the state set up a program under which U.S. citizens could register to be hired by farms or other industries that are now short of workers.
Within a short time, hundreds of unemployed citizens had signed up for the program, seeking jobs that might otherwise have gone unfilled after illegal aliens started leaving the state.
But it appears the complaint that farms would not have enough workers without illegal aliens was at least somewhat overblown. Officials in Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley's administration point out that hardly any employers have posted jobs for the willing -- and legal -- American workers who signed up for the program.
Some farmers say that the few U.S. citizens they have rounded up on their own to fill farm jobs don't really want to work. But why, then, are the farms reluctant to tap the pool of hundreds of legal, willing Alabama workers who signed up with the state program?
"There are people willing to do the jobs," a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations told The Associated Press.
And we suspect that as unemployment remains painfully high, the number of people willing to do those jobs will grow.
Will newly hired Americans who perhaps have never worked on a farm be immediately as efficient as those who have done farm work for years? No, but that will come with experience.
And above all else, the fact remains that American jobs should be filled by people who are in this country legally.