06/08/07 Checking Immigration

Checking on Immigration. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It is clear that agriculture leads the list of industries that want to see an immigration reform bill. Ag producers have been feeling the effects of a lack of workers to pick crops and unfortunately the problem will more than likely get worse before it gets better. With the Senate firmly locking horns on the issue, what do Ag leaders think? Valoria Loveland is the Washington Department of Agriculture Director and is also the current chair of the State Department of Ags. LOVELAND: All of the states ag directors, commissioners and secretaries have been in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. We have - two, three years we've been working on a portion of that immigration reform that was called AgJobs that everybody had worked on that was in the agricultural industry primarily all of the commodity groups, the labor groups and everybody set down and pounded out an AgJobs portion that is incorporated now in a part of the debate  the discussion on the Farm Bill but also a separate immigration reform. Loveland says the whole issue can be a timing issue. LOVELAND: What we came to across all 50 states is that it doesn't make any difference if it's fishing, dairy, fruit & vegetables, processing  food processing, those are seasonal jobs for the most part and the work force has been through immigration over the last several years and so with the homeland security and the fact that we are trying to secure our borders, everything is sort of timing thing where (we) secure the borders, try to find people who are in the country illegally and get them out of the country from the homeland security perspective to the disruption of legal immigration as well as having adequate workers who like to do this or willing to do this seasonal work across the United States. Something as big as this immigration reform bill has many, many facets. Do the State Ag Department fee that we're missing something? LOVELAND: I don't know that there is anything we are missing  meaning all 50 states. Truly states that have a lot of fruits and vegetables are very dependent on migrant work force, however the longer you talk and the more people you talk to between food processing which is everywhere and seasonal and then practically every state has some fruits and vegetable crops as well. It's pretty universal that this is a major challenge that Congress needs to take up and resolve. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.