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The President-Elect’s threat of a blanket deportation of all undocumented immigrants has the agriculture industry a little nervous about what that could mean for the workforce. But Washington Representative Dan Newhouse says from what he understands, they will be focusing on certain individuals.
“You’ll be looking at those individuals who pose a national security threat, a public security threat, or those that have expired visas.”
What that means exactly is unclear.
“An overall blanket deportation, I’ve yet to see what the details of that would actually be or if that is even being considered. Again, that would be another one of the, I guess, cautions that I will be providing the administration as to the impact to certainly agriculture but other industries if that is the kind of plan that’s in the works.”
Because without workers, Newhouse says the ag industry is in trouble.
“I’ve been saying for several years now, agriculture is, you know, the industry is fine if we are forced to utilize E-Verify and go through all of the other verification processes to make sure that the workforce is here legally. We want that. But at the same time, we need a legal source of workers. We have to have the employees to begin with.”
Newhouse says that as he and other industry supporters are emphasizing the critical need for foreign workers, more and more lawmakers seem to be listening.
“You know, this is one of the reasons I’m optimistic, and I’ve been trying to express that. You know, a lot of my colleagues have said that they can’t support increasing the number of visas of people coming in to work in the agricultural industry if we have the crisis situation we do at the southern border.”
Newhouse says he will also continue his work on his Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which has been gaining more traction in recent months.
I’m Lorrie Boyer reporting for AgNet West.