The image of illegal aliens in agriculture persists, since they occupy 53 percent of farm labor , but in the near future we may be seeing fewer of them.

The reason: robots and automation are replacing human workers on the farm just as surely as on the factory floor. A few years back, simple automatic harvesters and weeders began to appear in the fields.

Now the technical advances are startling: robots can see a vegetable ready to be harvested and pick it automatically with no human required.

Below, a robotic “hand” picks a pepper.

Keep in mind that a 2013 Oxford University study found that 45 percent of US jobs are vulnerable to computerization in the next 20 years.

So the next time you hear someone like Paul Ryan say there will be future labor shortages because of Boomers leaving the workforce, tell him that technology will more than cover the jobs being left open by retirement.

America certainly doesn’t need to double legal immigration, as planned in the Senate Gang of Eight bill, particularly with unskilled peasants from Mexico and points south who will only be additions to the permanent welfare-using underclass.

Given the shrinking need for workers generally because of technology, the correct number of immigrants is ZERO.