Goodlatte's AG Act advances from Judiciary Committee

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REGULATORY >IMMIGRATION


Goodlatte's AG Act advances from Judiciary Committee

Agricultural Guestworker Act creates new agricultural guestworker program.

Oct 25, 2017



Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s Agricultural Guestworker Act today passed the House Judiciary Committee by a one-vote margin, 17-16.

The bill, H.R. 4092, creates a new agricultural guestworker program, the H-2C guestworker program, which is designed to cover year-round employers, including dairies, food processors and aquaculture operations. Further the AG Act, as Goodlatte’s measure is known, allows experienced unauthorized agricultural workers to join the H-2C program and provides more flexibility to American farmers with respect to housing, transportation, and touchback periods.

“Although no other country in the world rivals America’s agriculture industry, our nation’s farmers face many obstacles in today’s global economy,” said Goodlatte, R-Virginia. “One challenge in particular is access to a stable and reliable workforce when not enough American workers can be found to fill jobs. The current agricultural guestworker program is unworkable for farmers, buries them in red tape and excessive costs, and must be replaced. I look forward to continue working with members of Congress on this bill so that farmers can continue growing our food and our economy with the assurance that their labor needs will be met.”

House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, signaled he’s willing to help Goodlatte shepherd the legislation through the House.

“It’s time for an ag worker program that both respects our nation’s immigration laws and keeps American agriculture competitive,” Conaway said in a statement. “As a former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Mr. Goodlatte understands the challenges facing farmers and ranchers. His bill cuts red tape and institutes a flexible program that accounts for the different labor needs of various producers – be it the ongoing needs of a dairy operation or the seasonal needs of specialty crop farmers.”
The National Milk Producers Federation said it supports the guestworker program.

Although not ideal, the AG Act “helps advance our efforts to assure a stable, dependable and legal workforce for America’s dairy farmers, now and in the future,” said Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of NMPF. “The AG Act is the first step in a long process of establishing a workable solution for dairy farmers’ labor needs. It recognizes that we must improve on the current system by pursuing a new approach to matching the supply and demand for workers in U.S. agriculture.”

Goodlatte’s bill would replace the existing H-2A temporary visa program, which dairy farmers largely cannot use because their labor needs are year-round, not seasonal. In addition to establishing the new visa for future farm workers, it would allow currently undocumented farm workers to apply for H-2C visas so that they can participate legally in the agricultural workforce.

While the version of the legislation marked up in committee requires further improvements, Mulhern said that overall, the AG Act bill “merits the support of America’s farming community, and its refinement and passage must be a priority for congressional leaders.”

George Rohrer, a dairy farmer in Dayton, Va., and a member of the NMPF Board of Directors, said that farmers “have waited for years for lawmakers to fix our broken immigration system. The AG Act is evidence that Congressman Goodlatte has listened to many of our concerns, and is willing to try a new approach to the problem. As a farmer, it’s difficult to plan for tomorrow when you don’t know whether you’ll be able to hire qualified people today.”

Related content:

The AG Act allows a minimum of 500,000 workers for farms and related employers and streamlines regulations for hiring them. The Ag Act also allows some unauthorized immigrants to participate in the program. – Cato Institute
Source: House Judiciary Committee, Conaway, NMPF

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The AG Act allows a minimum of 500,000 workers for farms and related employers and streamlines regulations for hiring them. The Ag Act also allows some unauthorized immigrants to participate in the program. – Cato Institute

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I've been a registered Republican for 40 years, but my party is really starting to piss me off!

Survey Shows Impacts Immigration Policy has on Agriculture


Podcast / Newsline October 24, 2017

Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture / CC0 https://www.fb.org/assets/img/icon-e...-link-tiny.gif

A survey by the California Farm Bureau shows farmers continue to have trouble finding a full workforce. Micheal Clements has more.


Clements: A survey recently released by the California Farm Bureau shows immigration policy still harms agriculture in the same capacity as seen in a similar survey in 2012. The informal survey showed that more than half of responding farmers had experienced employee shortages during the past year. California Farm Bureau President Paul Wenger says the worker shortage impacts farm operations.


Wenger: We have seen some people making some changes in their cropping patterns, they go to more mechanized types of crops and trying to deal with farm labor contractors. But, the bottom line is we have a broken immigration system. Farmers and ranchers are having to make decision not based on the markets but based on the availability of labor.


Clements: Wenger says the shortage in farm labor means a more competitive situation for farmers to source workers.


Wenger: You see a lot of farm labor contractors going into other fields and orchards offering increased wages – rob Peter to pay Paul –and get somebody to come over and pick their crop and leave the others. When you don’t have that available supply, it means there’s a big fight over those folks that are there and at the end of the day somebody is going to lose.


Clements: He says the survey gives Congress proof that agriculture needs comprehensive immigration reform.


Wenger: Instead of just talking and saying there’s a problem, having a survey like this that goes out does help folks in Congress see that we have a problem on the farm with labor, and finding available labor and here’s the specifics. So, these kind of surveys give credibility to what the American Farm Bureau or state Farm Bureaus are saying.


Clements: Micheal Clements, Washington.




https://www.fb.org/podcast/survey-sh...on-agriculture

We do not need 30 MILLION illegal alien lettuce pickers!

Apply for work permit...no family allowed...pick crops...go home!

Hire Americans to pick crops and milk the cows. Train them and pay them. We make whatever minor price impact that has a thousand times over by putting our own people to work at these important jobs.

We already pay the high price of produce...just not at the check out stand.

The farmers and those who hire them are the ones that make out, pay no taxes and the expenses are PAID by the US taxpayers to the tune of One Trillion a year across the board in services out of OUR paychecks.

Court, judges, lawyers, lost wages, identity theft, DUI hit and run, murder, rape, gangs, crime, theft, assault, high auto insurance, high health insurance, destroying neighborhoods bringing property values down, overcrowded schools, overcrowded jails and prisons, detention centers, lawsuits, border patrol, EMT services, anchor babies, healthcare, graffiti, jobs, diseases, dumbing down our kids in school, free school lunch, welfare, food stamps, garbage on the border, voting, driving on our roads, taking taxpayer funded services, fires started by illegals, car theft, RV theft, taking jobs from our high school kids...the list is long!

Exactly right, Beezer!! We pay in debt, $20 trillion of it, due most largely to the cost of illegal immigration and massive excess legal immigration. Put Americans to work in all these jobs, pay them and train them, and they'll do an excellent high-quality job at whatever the work is. There has never been a job an American won't do. Ever, and there still isn't. If Americans aren't showing up, it's because they don't know about it, can't afford to get to it, the pay isn't high enough, there's no training offered, even low-skilled work requires training, and those are all problems and issues that business is 100% responsible for solving for the privilege of operating in our country.

Any business claiming they can't find someone to say milk their 5,000 cows in their 2,000 population community out of 250 million Americans but can hire all day long from Mexico and Guatemala??!! Oh puleeze. You greedy low-life treasonous turds need to shut up or get out of the milk business. Based on milk prices at Walmart, there's too much damn milk being produced anyway. 1/2 gallon of milk for 72 cents?? Your problem isn't not enough workers, it's too many cows producing way too much milk that reduces the prices so low, you can't cover your legal costs, so you want to CHEAT, when you need to cut back production.

BUY AMERICAN! HIRE AMERICAN!

Don't forget to add in the BILLIONS of dollars that they send back over the border on top of that.

Money that should stay on OUR soil and be spent in OUR economy.

Get these parasites out of here!

No DACA, no path to stay and no amnesty.

Let work permits expire...sell out and take your whole family with you.


GO BUILD AMERICA ON YOUR SOIL! GO RUN FOR OFFICE ON YOUR SOIL AND CHANGE YOUR OWN COUNTRY!