White House Pushes Immigration Reform

White House Pushes Immigration Reform. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

The White House had a bit of a slap on the wrist for the House on Monday as they released a new report detailing the important benefits provided by the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill for the domestic agriculture sector, its workforce, and rural American communities. The House has yet to come up with a workable version. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack spoke with reporters about the report.

VILSACK: I think everyone understands and appreciates that the immigration system is broken and that it is having an impact on agriculture in rural communities. But today, drawing on a series of reports and surveys over the last several years from USDA and outside of USDA this report now puts together comprehensively the economic benefits to agriculture and rural communities from a comprehensive immigration fix.

The report really brings nothing new to the table but does pull all the information into one document.

VILSACK: We now know from a series of surveys that the broken immigration system is beginning to have an impact on labor scarcity within agriculture. The report addresses a number of surveys. This lack of workers, this lack of security in workers - we took a look at this in USDA trying to determine what that impact would be in terms of a long term for agriculture and the bottom line is simply the lack of labor will today and will in the future , if it continues, result in a decrease in agricultural production, a decrease in agricultural outputs and exports.

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