Immigration Changes Part 2

Immigration Changes Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Washington Farm Labor Association is probably the one organization that has a grasp on all the changes going on right now with immigration reform. WAFLA’s Dan Fazio has been keeping tabs on both the Senate and the House and today he gives us a look at the House side of things.

FAZIO: First, the House of Representatives has its own group of group of eight or “Gang of Eight” – Republicans and Democrats just like the Senate, and they’re working on a comprehensive immigration reform bill, a comprehensive bill that will cover everything from undocumented workers to high tech visas to more green cards, etc. And so we are hoping that they will have their bill out in the first week of June. And in addition, the House judiciary committee chairman, Rep. Goodlatte, a Republican from VA, very smart gentleman - an immigration lawyer - he’s going to introduce a series of individual bills. And he’s out with his first individual immigration bill and this is an agriculture worker bill.

Fazio says it’s a very good bill for farmers.

FAZIO: Some of the key points in it are that it has a cap of 500,000 guest workers instead of the 337,000 in the Senate bill and it allows jobs in packing and processing plants as opposed to the Senate bill where packing and processing plants were not eligible for these visas and it does not require farmers to pay for housing or transportation.

Tomorrow we will finish up this look at the immigration reform debate.

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