07/29/08 Working On Immigration P.2

Working on Immigration. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Dan Fazio with Washington Farm Bureau's Member Services says the U.S. was made of immigrants and we need immigrants to keep moving forward. FAZIO: Every developed nation except Japan is pursuing a guest worker program and they all have major problems. By the way, Japan has the lowest immigration rate in the world; about 1% and it's literally killing their economy. We need people to come here to do the jobs we don't want to do. We have a tradition of welcoming people who work hard, who provide for their families and practice their faith. Fazio says that many families in the state come from immigrant backgrounds even his own Italian "Without Papers" history. FAZIO: What if I told you I have a program today where I could get 5000 undocumented workers to voluntarily self-deport without it costing us a penny. I could even probably get them to pay to do it. Would you be interested in finding out about it? WFB has developed a plan they hope will help solve the immigration issue, at least in Washington State. FAZIO: Washington Farm Bureau has come up with an 8-point essential worker pilot program similar to the one that was recently adopted in Colorado. We're going to ask our state to adopt it in January and then we're going to ask the Feds to work with our state on it. Fazio recently spoke at the National Onion Convention. Tomorrow Fazio lays out the plan. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.