There’s a renewed battle brewing on the immigration front. Labor groups have joined forces to fight guest worker programs because they say they lead to exploitation of workers and supposedly displace U.S. jobs.

“We need an immigration system that works for America’s workers,” said Joseph T. Hansen, International President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and chair of the Change to Win Immigration Task Force, in a statement released yesterday. “For too long, our nation’s immigration system has fueled discrimination and exploitation of workers. It has driven down wages and working conditions. And it has failed to live up to our nation’s values.”

Making the immigration system work better is a great idea. But there is one key question that keeps coming up regarding the jobs that so many temporary workers in this country do — Will Americans be willing to do back-breaking work such as farming?

Two reasons they may not from Richard Greenwald, dean of Caspersen School of Graduate Studies at Drew University in Madison, N.J.:

First, physical labor is not valued in American culture. We prize technical work, physical work seems too devalued and degraded and simply unattractive to most Americans. Second, the wage structures for these jobs are so very low that those with options will take anything else.

I can’t help but think in today’s economy, there will be quite a few takers, especially if agricultural companies, and other low wage industries, start paying a fair wage and benefits.

One immigration expert points out in a New York Times opinion piece last month that Americans already hold a big chunk of low-paying jobs in this country.

The first thing to note about workers in low-wage jobs that require relatively little education is that the overwhelming majority are born in the United States. For example, the 2007 American Community Survey by the Census Bureau showed that 65 percent of meatpackers, 68 percent of construction laborers, 73 percent of dishwashers and 74 percent of janitors were U.S.-born. Of course, the immigrant share (legal and illegal) of any occupation varies enormously from city to city. But it’s clear from this data that Americans are willing to do this work.

–Steven A. Camarota is the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit research organization.

And, it appears, they may be willing to pick up a shovel and do some farming as well.

This from Fox News earlier this year:

A Tennessee woman has filed complaints with three government agencies alleging that a local farm discriminated against her for being an American.

Sabrina Steele, 28, says that when she applied for work at Pope’s Plant Farm in Greenback, Tenn., a man she believed to be the farm’s owner discouraged her from taking the job so that he could hire foreign workers instead.

Critics say the case demonstrates that changes to the government’s H-2A foreign worker program will make it harder for Americans to find work.

She may be an oddball, but I think most people would be willing to take any job they could in order to feed their families. Don’t you, and wouldn’t you?