In California's agricultural communities, where the values of crops and farm land are soaring, a new brand of immigration-based rural poverty is quietly taking root. Philip Martin, a UC Davis agricultural economist and an authority on farm labor, and co-editors Edward Taylor and Michael Fix examine this new phenomenon in the newly published book "Poverty Amid Prosperity: Immigration and the Changing Face of Rural California," published by the Urban Institute Press. "Because of recent changes in Mexico's rural economy and in legalization programs for immigrants to the United States, fewer Mexican-born farm workers are returning to Mexico after the harvest season," explains Martin. Instead, the new immigrants are settling primarily in the agricultural towns of the San Joaquin and Salinas valleys, where permanent jobs for unskilled laborers are scarce. As a result, the highest rates of welfare dependency are in California's agricultural counties, where public assistance may go to as many as one-third of the residents. The situation may worsen as new welfare time limits throw more U.S. born residents into the agricultural labor market, says Martin.