Beaver Relocation & Hastings on Immigration Reform

Beaver Relocation & Hastings on Immigration Reform. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

It seems that immigration reform is finally seeing a little light after being pretty much ignored in recent years even though farmers, ranchers and orchardists have been beating the drums loudly. Washington Congressman Doc Hastings hopes to see more work done.

HASTINGS: My focus on immigration reform has been primarily recognizing that the biggest part of our economy is agriculture and the biggest part of our agriculture industry is the labor intensive aspect to it. The good new is that there is now recognition that labor intensive agriculture needs to be treated a little bit differently when you look at immigration policies as a whole. That was not the case a year ago. That recognition will hopefully lead us to getting some legislation so that our agriculture employees will have some certainty as to the labor force.

What has been a nuisance to folks on the west side of Washington State might be a bit of a blessing east of the Cascades. A bill was just approved by the Washington State Senate that would allow beavers to shipped from the west to the east part of the state...but not the other way around. Legislators are using the opportunity to have a little fun with the bill but the bottom line is whole beaver families would have to be relocated to areas that need help in damming streams.

Now here’s today’s Washington Grange report.

(Grange)

That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.