Immigration Changes

Immigration Changes. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

The immigration debate is heating up on Capitol Hill and Dan Fazio with Washington Farm Labor Association gives us an update.

FAZIO: This is a big week for Immigration reform. Let me tell you now where we are in the process. I also wanted to let you know that at Washington Farm Labor Association, we have asked the experts in DC to update us, and your listeners, and they are going to recording a 30 minute presentation this Friday that people can watch whenever it is convenient for them.

Fazio starts the update with the Senate.

FAZIO: The Senate Immigration Reform bill came out a few weeks ago and is being fixed right now. Just a quick example for agriculture people, the transportation piece is being fixed so that transportation only applies to the workers coming up for inbound transportation. There were many other little fixes. This is called a manager’s amendment. And that manager’s amendment has been completed right now and so they’ve got all the drafting errors out of that 844 page bill and now it moves on to the next step which is the process of offering amendments.

This markup phase has begun and will probably take a couple of weeks to complete. Might be the end of May before we see the bill out of committee. Tomorrow, Fazio looks at the House side.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.