Editorial: Farm labor crisis looms
Posted: Monday, July 11, 2011 12:00 pm

Farming is a business of action. The cows need milking, the farmer makes sure they get milked now, not later. The crops need harvesting, the farmer gets out there and harvests them now, not later. Getting business done has top priority or the farm soon becomes history.

Congress, however, is another story.

Congress has been fiddling around for years with regulations for allowing foreigners to work on U.S. farms. A workable system is needed to allow farmers to bring in foreign workers on a temporary basis. That is about all that lawmakers can agree on. Where things fall apart is when the discussion turns to how to fix the current, largely unworkable system.

Under the current H2A visa program, immigrants are allowed in to the country to work temporarily on farms. However, hiring under the program is a slow, complicated process. Nor does it include dairy farms. Sens. Kirsten E. Gillibrand and Charles E. Schumer have joined other Democratic senators proposing to expand H2A to dairy farms. Similar legislation has been introduced in the House by Democrat Rep. William L. Owens. It’s an attempt to fix one problem in a program that has so many problems that some lawmakers want to scrap it and craft a new guest farmworker program.

Efforts at comprehensive immigration reform, which would include an “Ag Jobsâ€