Thread: Pantano presses Rouzer on lobbying for amnesty in WECT debate

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

"I had some farmers who came to me and said ‘David, you know how bad this immigration issue is. We cannot get the legal labor we need to get the crops out of the field.' They said, 'Will you work to pull together the N.C. farm leadership to see if we can find something, our best opportunity to get the reforms we need to our legal guest worker programs so we can actually use it?'

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

We are selling our children's future and America's sovereignty one cigarette, cigar, cantaloupe, ear of corn, and pint of strawberries at a time.

I thought there was a program in place to allow agricultural workers to come in and legally do the work, and then leave.

Ah, here we go! From Wikipedia (yes I know it's not the greatest source but it gives the main idea!)

An H-2A visa allows a foreign national entry into the U.S. for temporary or seasonal agricultural work. There are several requirements of the employer in regards to this visa. The H-2A temporary agricultural program establishes a means for agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring nonimmigrant foreign workers to the U.S. to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature.^[1] Currently in the United States there are about 30,000 temporary agricultural workers under this visa program. All of these workers are supposed to be (my emphasis) covered by U.S. wage laws, workers' compensation and other standards.^[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-2A_Visa

Why can't farmers use this program?