More On Immigration Reform

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

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano along with Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack recently spoke with reporters on the importance of comprehensive immigration reform. Napolitano talks about what she wants people to understand about this reform.

NAPOLITANO: A: I want to leave people with the confidence this is a good security bill. Not just on the border but overall. B: It’s a good economic bill. And C: Importantly it’s great for rural America because it deals specifically with issue affecting agriculture, with issues affecting small business, with issue affecting employer verification which is the key driver of illegal migration and it deals with how to make sure that American workers are protected in the entire process.

Napolitano talks about the e-verify system.

NAPOLITANO: Basically what it is - is a means to check the legal eligibility of someone applying for work to get a job. What the bill would provide is that over the next 5 years we would have national implementation of e-verify. It would be done in phases with agriculture , the agriculture industry being basically the last phase because we want to make sure we have the technology and capability to reach out into rural America into the fields and so forth and make it as easy as possible for employers to obey.

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