More On Immigration Deal

More On Immigration Deal. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

A new immigration deal has been proposed and the President has added his comments but what the President didn’t talk about was a guest worker or what’s now being called a future flow program. Washington Farm Labor Association’s Dan Fazio comments.

FAZIO: The answer is simple. That’s a tough issue for Democrats. Guest worker programs are traditionally the toughest ones for labor unions and for the Democratic party. He stayed pretty close to his base, the President did in his speech and did not indicate any movement on that issue. So that’s kind of disappointing.

Fazio says the Senates proposal was pretty good.

FAZIO: I was hoping that the President would mirror the Senate proposal. The Senate had four guiding principals to their proposal and one of them was in fact a future flow program. President Obama mentioned three guiding principals and they were smarter enforcement, a pathway to citizenship and improvements in the legal immigration system. Now in that third one, improvements in the legal immigration system he could have talked about guest worker programs but the didn’t.

But just the fact that there has been some talk is good news.

FAZIO: Again on the good news side, we see lots of bipartisan support for hi-tech visa programs. There was a bill that was dropped on Monday, there was a bill that was dropped on Tuesday about hi-tech visas and we expect one of those bills to be rolled into the comprehensive immigration reform.

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