2019年考研《英语二》真题及答案16

2019年考研《英语二》真题及答案16

2019年考研《英语二》真题及答案汇总

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American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now.Given a multi-year decline in illegal immigration,and a similarly sustained pickup in the U.S.job market,the complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm workers.

Efforts to create a more straightforward agricultural-workers visa that would enable foreign workers to stay longer in the U.S.and change jobs within the industry have so far failed in Congress.If this doesn’t change,American businesses,communities and consumers will be the losers.

Perhaps half of U.S.farm laborers are undocumented immigrants.As fewer such workers enter the U.S.,the characteristics of the agricultural workforce are changing.Today’s farm laborers,while still predominantly born in Mexico,are more likely to be settled,rather than migrating,and more likely to be married than single.They are also aging.At the start of this century,about one-third of crop workers were over the age of 35.Now,more than half are.And crop picking is hard on older bodies.One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it has been all along:Native U.S.workers won’t be returning to the farm.

Mechanization is not the answer either—not yet at least.Production of corn,cotton,rice,soybeans and wheat have been largely mechanized,but many high-value,labor-intensive crops,such as strawberries,need labor.Even dairy farms,where robots currently do only a small share of milking,have a long way to go before they are automated.

As a result,farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in the agricultural workforce.Starting around 2012,requests for the visas rose sharply;from 2011 to 2016 the number of visas issued more than doubled.

The H-2A visa has no numerical cap,unlike the H-2B visa for nonagricultural work,which is limited to 66,000 annually.Even so,employers frequently complain that they aren’t allotted all the workers they need.The process is cumbersome,expensive and unreliable.One survey found that bureaucratic delays led H-2A workers to arrive on the job an average of 22 days late.And the shortage is compounded by federal immigration raids,which remove some workers and drive others underground.

In a 2012 survey，71 percent of tree-fruit growers and nearly 80 percent of raisin and berry growers said they were short of labor.Some western growers have responded by moving operations to Mexico.From 1998-2000,14.5 percent of the fruit Americans consumed was imported.Little more than a decade later,the share of imported fruit had increased to 25.8 percent.

In effect,the U.S.can import food or it can import the workers who pick it.

35.Which of the following could be the best title for this text?

A.U.S.Agriculture in Decline?

B.Import Food or Labor?

C.America Saved by Mexico?

D.Manpower vs.Automation?

35题参考答案及解析：

35、【答案】B Import Food or Labor?

【解析】主旨题。文章第一段明确指出美国农民面临劳动力短缺的问题，而这一问题的根源在于针对农场工人的移民制度。二段和三段分析了移民签证和移民现状的冲突。第四段指出机械化并不能解决该问题。第五和六段分析了现在农场工人所依赖的H-2A签证政策也没能有助于解决劳动力短缺。第七段通过研究调查再次确定了劳动力短缺的问题。最后一段总结指出解决方案，美国要么进口食品，要么进口农场劳动力。Labor为本文中复现的主题词。故正确答案为B选项。A选项中的decline夸大概念。C选项中的saved无中生有，D选项中的Automation断章取义，且与原文表述相反。