Speaking Out For Immigration Reform

Speaking Out For Immigration Reform

Speaking Out For Immigration Reform

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Jon DeVaney, Executive Director of the Yakima Valley Growers-Shippers Association, recently took part in the National Day of Action on Immigration Reform. DeVaney and others have stressed that the malfunctions in our current immigration system create uncertainty for agriculture, which slows investment growth and overall growth in our state's economy.

DEVANEY: When you have fruit growers that can't hire the people they need to harvest their crops there's going to be impacts up and down the economic ladder in our state and region. A good example - apples are our state's number one crop, and of course, all apples are picked by hand. A recent study by the Washington apple industry found that the total economic impact in just the state of Washington from apples to be $7.5 billion, supporting 61 thousand jobs. Now these aren't all farm labor jobs. These are people who work in support industries. Without the labor force needed to pick the fruit though, all of those jobs and all of that economic activity in our state and nation are at risk.

As Washington crops continue to set record yields on a nearly annual basis the labor problems are only expected to increase.

DEVANEY: So for agriculture and the fruit growers of Washington in particular, fixing our immigration system needs to happen now. We had polling that was recently completed by the Partnership for a New American Economy that shows that there is strong public support across regions and across parties for acting now to fix our immigration system. So, we're calling on folks to speak out to your elected officials to act now. This is important and it can't wait.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.

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