(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-10-07 15:43

LOS ANGELES -- The US government is quietly rewriting federal regulations to bring more foreign laborers into the country after enforcement measures against illegal immigration introduced earlier resulted in a nationwide shortage of farmworkers, a report said on Saturday.

The urgent effort, underway at the departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to rescue US farm owners from the lack of legal farmworkers, which is threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Los Angeles Times reported on its website.

"It is important for the farm sector to have access to labor to stay competitive," the newspaper quoted White House spokesman Scott Stanzel as saying.

Stanzel said that as the southern border with Mexico has tightened, some producers in the United States have a more difficult time finding a workforce.

The push to speedily rewrite the regulations is also the Bush administration's attempt to step into the breach left when Congress failed to pass an immigration overhaul in June, the newspaper said.

The comprehensive immigration reform bill could have addressed the reality of American farms, where almost three-quarters of the workers are thought to be illegal immigrants.

It was reported that the three federal agencies are scrutinizing the regulations to see if they can adjust the current farmworker program, a highly bureaucratic system so unwieldy that less than 2 percent of American farms use it to bring in foreign workers.

They are also considering a series of changes, including lengthening the time workers can stay, expanding the types of work they can do, simplifying the application process and even redefining terms such as "temporary," the report said.