Trump's Plan for Undocumented Workers
From the Ag Information Network, this is today’s Fruit Grower Report. The deportation scare for many farm workers appears to now be on the President’s radar.
President Trump held a Cabinet meeting with his top officials Thursday and said his administration would provide some relief to farmers and hotel operators who employ immigrants lacking legal status …
TRUMP … "We have to take care of our farmers, and hotels and, you know, various places where they need the people, and we’re going to be working with you very carefully on that.”
President Trump says it will involve a process …
TRUMP … “We’re also going to work with farmers, that if they have strong recommendations for certain people, we’re going to let them stay in for a while and work with the farmers and then come back and go through a process, a legal process.”
And how that will work, Trump says should benefit both the farmer and the worker …
TRUMP … “So, A farmer will come in with a letter concerning certain people saying they're great, they're working hard. We're going to slow down a little bit for them, and then we're going to ultimately bring them back.
They'll go out, they're going to come back as legal workers,"
The USDA reports that more than two-thirds of U.S. crop workers are foreign-born.
Many of them came to the country through the H-2A visa
program, but officials estimate that 42% of the workers are undocumented.
Trump's comments during his Cabinet meeting are, though vague, are the most detail the administration has provided on the fate of the nation's farmworkers without legal status
