Senator to introduce guest worker bill
Washington Ag Today October 12, 2011 California Senator Dianne Feinstein says she will introduce legislation this week that would create a five-year agricultural guest worker program. Feinstein: “There will be no amnesty. There will be no citizenship. But it will provide a blue card to an agricultural work who has met certain criteria to be able to remain in the country with his family, provided that individual works agriculture a certain number of days a year.” Feinstein says the blue card would be loaded with biometric data identifying a migrant worker and would be preferable to House legislation requiring employers to use online verification to check the immigration status of potential hires. Some labor shortages have been reported for this fall’s fruit harvest in Washington. Over 75 agricultural organizations, farmer co-ops, and agribusinesses have called on the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate agriculture committees to include in their recommendations to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, a two-year moratorium on all discretionary, non-essential regulatory actions that would increase the cost of food and agricultural production and processing. Included in the groups making the request are the Washington State Council of Farmer Cooperatives and Northwest Dairy Association or Dairygold. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s Washington Ag Today on Northwest Aginfo Net. ?
