Alien invasions are a bad thing, as a general rule. Our notoriously porous borders cause all kinds of problems for the U.S., from aspiring terrorists who slip in to form sleeper cells to illegal immigrants whose cheap labor costs us plenty in the long run.

Plus, our lax borders make CNN’s apoplectic populist Lou Dobbs play like a broken record with his “Broken Borders” segments, which take precious air time away from my favorite Dobbs refrains: “Exporting America,” “Assault on the Middle Class,” and “Red Star Rising.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love Lou, but what would he say to the farmers who claim that the post 9/11 crackdown at the borders is causing a major crisis in the fields? Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fruits and vegetables are rotting on the ground while farmers grapple with an acute labor shortage that threatens to undermine the very future of American agriculture.

Would Americans stoop to picking fruit if the pay were better? Clearly the jobs are going begging, but working on the food chain gang for slave wages is apparently an offer we can refuse.

So it seems we have to choose between securing our borders and maintaining our nation’s food supply. Start planting your Hollow Victory Garden now, because if we win the border war, we may find ourselves facing food shortages the likes of which we haven’t seen since World War II.