08/20/07 New immigrant worker rules target employers

Washington Ag August 20, 2007 There is concern among Washington growers over whether they will have enough workers to harvest the apple crop this year in a timely manner and new rules issued by the Department of Homeland Security may make the labor situation even more difficult. Austin Perez, labor specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation says the new rules deal with how employers handle questionable documents from migrant workers. He says the new rules will hike up fines and will likely lead to more felony arrests of employers and illegal immigrants. Perez: "Our employers are being asked to be INS agents. With counterfeiting technology as sophisticated as it is they are not going to be able to figure out which documents are legitimate or not. But rather than putting the burden on Homeland Security to figure out which documents are legitimate they are asking employers to check documents twice." And Perez says this doesn't fix the problem which is that farmers rely on foreign workers to harvest their crops and those workers are getting harder and harder to find. Perez: "Ultimately Congress is going to have to solve this problem. We need an immigration bill and we need it this year. We cannot afford to wait any longer. We have to have these jobs filled. We are not going to find American workers to do it. We need a guest worker program that will allow us to recruit workers from abroad when we can't find them locally. Until that is done this problem is only going to get worse." The new rules are to take effect in mid-September. I'm Bob Hoff.