H-2A Study for Washington Ag Pt 1
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. Proving their economic worth. That's the motivation behind a recent study estimating the economic impact of the H-2A guestworker program.
WAFLA director Dan Fazio says the study prepared by ECONorthwest breaks down the numbers ...
DAN FAZIO ... "This is an economic study to quantify the contributions of the H-2A program in tree fruit and the last year we could get good statistics was 2015. And, during that year we were able to document and get right to the bottom line of $619-million-dollar total economic activity in Washington state caused by the legal worker program, and that's wages paid to workers and other kinds of less direct types of expenditures."
Fazio says it's pretty simple, the questions came from the very top ...
DAN FAZIO ... "And, of course, what motivates this Bob is that we're meeting with the Trump Administration, they're supportive of the program, they want more information, and basically what they've told us is, 'look, you need to make the business case for this program. You need to make the business case to why we should bring farm workers in here to work in America. You need to make the business case as to how this helps America.' And, we're very, very able to do that. We accept the challenge whole-heartedly."
The study was sponsored by the Washington Farm Bureau, Washington Tree Fruit Association, the legal team at Stoel Rives, accountants at Moss Adams, and the Washington Policy Center.
Listen tomorrow for more on this important study.
