02/15/08 Washington won't verify legal status of referred workers

Washington Ag February 15, 2008 The Washington State Farm Bureau is concerned that Washington may lose federal funding for guest-worker programs, or worse, precipitate an immigration crackdown on the state's farmers. Here's why. Farmers who want to use the H-2A guest worker program must first try and recruit local workers through the state workforce agency before they can get visas to bring guest-workers from another country. The Farm Bureau's Dan Fazio says they discovered last year that the state was not verifying that the workers it was referring to farmers were here legally. There was no federal requirement for the states to do so, but Fazio says they got that changed. Fazio: "They put out guidance last November to the states telling them that if a person applied to the guest-worker program then the state should verify the legal presence of any referrals they sent before they refer them out to the farmer. On February 4th our state wrote back saying they would not comply with that technical guidance or policy position from the feds and so now the feds are threatening to take away funding for the guest-worker program for the state of Washington." Fazio says growers are being discouraged from using the guest-worker program by the state's action. I'm Bob Hoff.