BRIGHTON, Colo. -- Many Colorado farmers depend on migrant workers to help work the crops but the recent immigration crackdown is causing a major shortage of help.

It's harvest time but Sakata Farms in Brighton is having to manage with about 60 fewer workers than usual. With immigration such a hot-button issue, even legal workers are scared away from the fields.

Fewer workers means production for Sakata Farms is down by about 20 percent.

"We've been hiring locally but the turnover has been terrible, part-time people and so forth," said Bob Sakata, owner of Sakata Farms.

His cabbage field is littered with weeds because he doesn't have enough workers to control them and he's had to reduce his acreage.

Sakata, whose 3,000-acre farm has been in operation for 60 years, said he's feeling the pinch. Fears over deportation couldn't come at a worst time for him, he said.

"This is the peak. Our operation is going on around the clock to try and keep things going," he said.

Farmers say machines can only take up some of the slack. Many specialty crops have to be harvested by hand.

Sakata thinks that one solution would be the guest worker program, similar to the program that the U.S. had in the 60s and 70s.

"All we need is workers for maybe three months. That supports the whole operation and we'll get them legally from Mexico or wherever and after three months, they go back home," Sakata said.

He said that as he remembers it, the program worked great several decades ago and the workers were happy to go home to see their families after three months of arduous work in the sun.

A government program to help farmers hasn't worked either, Sakata said. The program was supposed to provide him with workers to help offset the declining migrant workforce but after he filled a mountain of paperwork, he sent it in and was told to redo it, he said.

Officials promised him that workers were coming by June 20 but none ever arrived and he had to move on, Sakata said.