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 commun

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.