Keith Eckel, whose family farm was Pennsylvania's leading producer of fresh market tomatoes, will not grow any this year.

He paid field hands about $11 an hour to harvest his crop last summer, but not a single U.S. citizen filled any of those 100 jobs. They did not want them. Mr. Eckel's work force was made up of eager newcomers from Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Now, he said, snarls in the federal guest worker program make it impossible for him to hire the immigrants he needs. So instead of gambling $1.5 million to plant and nurture a tomato crop that may never be harvested, he will not bother with it.

He said his decision saddened him. His family has grown tomatoes since 1949 and made a good living at it. Today, though, the risk outweighs the rewards, all because of government bureaucracy, he said.

"This is totally an immigration issue," said Mr. Eckel, of Clarks Summit, Lackawanna County. "Labor is the key ingredient. Our tomatoes have to be handpicked, and we cannot get the workers."

To him, immigration is the most important issue of the presidential campaign. He is pessimistic about progress being made, even though the three major contenders for the White House -- Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton -- have staked out plans to help farmers such as Mr. Eckel.

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"The problem is Congress. It has failed to deal with immigration reform," he said.

Mr. Eckel, 61, calls himself "an active Republican," but he knows he is at odds with a wing of his party over immigration.

The most conservative Republicans have been reluctant to embrace Mr. McCain, who comes from the border state of Arizona. These critics say he has been soft on immigration issues, even teaming with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., on a reform bill.

Their plan would have allowed employers to hire foreigners on temporary visas, provided they could not find American workers to do the same jobs.

But if a segment of the Republican Party is uncomfortable with Mr. McCain, farmers see him as a voice of reason on the emotional issue of immigration.

Joe Fecondo, whose family runs a mushroom farm in the midst of a wealthy neighborhood in Bethel, Delaware County, is one of them.

He says he pays $14 an hour and employs 88 people, almost all of them from Mexico.

"We can't find Caucasians to do the work," Mr. Fecondo said.

Mushrooms, grown indoors, have no offseason. Mr. Fecondo, 46, says he must have reliable workers to do the dirty, demanding jobs on his farm. Immigrants, hungry for American paychecks, are the only ones who will, he said.

Their work enables his farm to produce 7 million pounds of white mushrooms a year. Overall, he says, mushrooms are a $400 million industry for Pennsylvania, top among the states.

Bipartisanship is Mr. Fecondo's top priority this election year. Squabbling and gridlock are common in Washington, D.C., he said. He wants to see cooperation, respect and commitment to resolve hot-button issues such as immigration reform.

"That's why I like Sen. McCain," said Mr. Fecondo, a Republican. "I see him as a liberal conservative, even though I know that sounds like an oxymoron."

While conservative talk-show hosts criticize Mr. McCain for being too friendly with Democrats, Mr. Fecondo finds his willingness to work with the other side to be a plus. Mr. Fecondo said he had turned against Republicans who took unbending stands on complex issues.

He refused to support former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum in his re-election campaign two years ago. He said Mr. Santorum became so rigid in his conservative agenda that he ignored the difficulties farmers have had in hiring immigrant laborers since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Howard and Janet Robinson, who raise cows in a picturesque section of Chester County, do all the work themselves, even though they are in their 60s. But they are sympathetic with fellow farmers, such as Mr. Fecondo, who need immigrant laborers to make their living.

"In agriculture, we need immigrants to survive. It is that simple," said Howard Robinson, 67.

The Robinsons, though, have little else in common with fellow farmers. They are staunch Democrats in an industry filled with Republicans.

Moreover, the biggest issue for them centers on what is happening abroad, not on U.S. soil. Both say ending the war in Iraq trumps all else.

Howard Robinson says the war's toll -- in taking human lives and consuming billions of taxpayer dollars -- makes it impossible for him to even consider voting Republican.

"We see Sen. McCain as an extension of Bush," he said. "We've had eight years that haven't been good for our country."

He is still debating whether to support Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Robinson said he likes them both, but the charisma and powerful oratory of Mr. Obama remind him of President John F. Kennedy, the first politician who inspired him.

Janet Robinson, 66, said she is inclined to vote for Mrs. Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary election next month.

"I like what the Clintons did for us before. We were pretty successful when Bill was in office. I'm probably going with Hillary."

Both of the Robinsons have worked two jobs for most of their lives while raising five children, all of whom graduated from college.

They ran a dairy farm from 1967 until 2005. After morning milking, Howard Robinson hurried to his second job, teaching English to seventh- and eighth-graders in the Oxford School District. Janet Robinson went from the farm to two different jobs, first working on the support staff of nearby Lincoln University, then at a museum.

During all those years, they say, Democrats seemed more attuned with the daily problems and challenges faced by hard-working people.

"Whether it was grant programs for people to go to college or farm issues, the Democrats seemed more interested in the little guy," Mr. Robinson said.

His political leanings also may have been shaped by going to college with thousands of people who tasted discrimination every day of their lives.

Mr. Robinson, who is white, completed his college degree at Lincoln, the nation's oldest historically black university. About 20 percent of Lincoln's students at the time were white. Lincoln was the undergraduate school of Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer who helped integrate America's public schools and later became an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Lincoln campus is four miles from the Robinsons' 250-year-old farmhouse. All the other farmers on their road are Amish, many recent arrivals from neighboring Lancaster County.

Condominiums and shopping center developments are exploding nearby, eating up farmland. Chester County's population has grown by more than 100,000 people, to nearly half a million, since 1990.

Most people the Robinsons age are retiring, but they say they will hang onto their farm, home to 35 cows and 19 calves.

"It's too small to make a living from, but too big to let grow up in weeds," Mr. Robinson said.

Some 160 miles north of them, in Lackawanna County, Keith Eckel says immigration problems are forcing him to cut back on more than his famous tomato crop.

Because he cannot hire a harvesting crew of immigrant Latinos, he decided not to plant pumpkins this year. He will cut his sweet corn crop in half. The lack of immigrant help will also eliminate hometown jobs, he said.

Because there will be no tomatoes this year, there is no need for him to hire some 60 American workers to package them. They prepared 125 trailer truck loads of tomatoes for distribution last year, the most in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Eckel said U.S. citizens want nothing to do with the backbreaking job of picking vegetables on 90-degree days. But 20 years ago, he could hire American students for some of the less demanding jobs in cultivating and weeding. Even that labor pool has dried up.

"Last year not even one high school student applied for a job with me," he said.

Americans, more pampered and less willing to do the hardest jobs, must embrace a workable immigration strategy if the U.S. economy is to flourish, Mr. Eckel said.

He is comfortable with the ideas Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton have for allowing in immigrants without compromising border security. He said he had not thoroughly studied Mr. Obama's approach.

Whoever wins in November, Mr. Eckel said, will have to be a peacemaker with Congress on immigration reform. Otherwise, he said, family farms like the one he loves will fade away.