Approaching Immigration Reform

Approaching Immigration Reform. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

For ag producers the next thing on their plate is seeing if Congress can get a workable immigration reform package done. The American Farm Bureau recently commissioned a study that lays out four scenarios of how Congress could act on immigration reform, and how that would affect the entire agriculture sector. The study, Gauging the Farm Sector's Sensitivity to Immigration Reform, is an update to a study conducted eight years ago. One scenario in the study was an enforcement-only approach to immigration reform. Farm Bureau immigration specialist Kristi Boswell says the study results show that approach would be devastating to agriculture if put into effect.

BOSWELL: The study estimates 30- to 60-billion dollars in economic losses for agriculture production, and 5 to 6-percent increase in food prices. So it does affect not only the producer side of things, but the consumer side as well.

Boswell says the livestock industry wasn't considered in the previous study.

BOSWELL: This time it found dramatic impacts of enforcement only on immigration. There would be production losses of 13 to 27-percent in the livestock sector alone.

Farmers would welcome domestic workers, but Boswell says Americans have outgrown crop work.

BOSWELL: I use me as an example. I grew up on a farm. I love agriculture and am still involved in the industry, but I didn't return to the farm. That's the trends at an owner-manager level, let alone a crop worker level, who are out really doing that manual labor of picking strawberries and cutting lettuce.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.