Question: You run a large vegetable farm operation. Because of the nature of the produce you are growing, you cannot use machines for harvesting your crops. So you hire seasonal workers to pick your vegetables in late summer and early fall. Picking vegetables is hard physical work in hot and uncomfortable conditions, and you cannot afford to pay very much because your farm operation runs on a very thin profit margin. There is an agency that finds immigrant farm workers to do the vegetable picking, but you have heard some workers talking about how this agency recruits in Central America and does not get proper work authorization documents for the people they bring into the United States. Still, you are contracting with the agency to provide temporary workers - if it turns out the workers are illegal immigrants, it is the agency and not you who would be punished for breaking the law. When you run an ad to hire your own workers directly to pick vegetables, you only get a few applications. Most of the people you interview refuse to take a job that hard for such low wages on only a temporary basis.
Based upon those facts, please answer the following questions:
1. Should you use the agency to get workers to pick your vegetable crop? If so, are there conditions or restrictions you would put on the agency first to make sure you are not using illegal immigrants to do labor on your farm?
2. Regardless of whether it is legal or not, is it unethical to use illegal immigrant labor to keep your business profitable?
3. Do you as an individual farmer have an ethical duty to think about the effect of illegal workers on the US labor market (depressing wages, depriving Americans of jobs, etc.)?