ANLA, Others Applaud Proposed AgJOBS Bills

The American Nursery and Landscape Association (ANLA) and the National Council of Agricultural Employers (NCAE) both called new bipartisan immigration reform bills introduced in the House and Senate a “major step forward” in helping to meet the worsening labor shortage needs of ag/hort employers.

The AgJOBS bills, introduced in the Senate by Senators Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, and in the House by Representatives Chris Cannon, R-Utah, and Howard Berman, D-California, would both reform the burdensome H-2A temporary alien farmworker program plus enable experienced agricultural workers who are unauthorized to work in the United States an opportunity to earn legal status over a period of time.

“This legislation recognizes that over half of America’s 1.6 million agricultural workers lack authorization to work, and that the current temporary worker system is an administrative nightmare,” asserted NCAE Executive Vice-President Sharon Hughes.

The legislation also “represents the coming together of traditional adversaries in agriculture, in pursuit of a common good that serves well the interests of workers and small and family business,” explained Craig Regelbrugge, ANLA’s senior director of government relations and co-chair or the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform (ACIR).

The new bills, which would make the H-2A program less of a paperwork “nightmare” for participating ag/hort employers, would also “allow approximately 500,000 agricultural workers who lack authorized immigration status the opportunity to apply for permanent resident status after continuing to work at least 360 days in agriculture over the next six years,” Hughes described.