American farmers and ranchers are confident they produce the best, most affordable food in the world - but they also realize foreign workers are an integral part of production. American Farm Bureau Federation Labor Specialist Paul Schlegel talks to Farm Bureau’s Johnna Miller about a new law that would have an enormous impact on that labor force:
New legislation introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas would require all employers in the country to use a government data base to verify that employees are legally allowed to work in the United States. American Farm Bureau Labor Specialist Paul Schlegel says the legal workforce act would have rough ramifications for US agriculture:
” The difficulty with E-verify for agriculture in particular is that we do not currently have a system that allows us to get legal workers. You hear stories from all across country about the difficulty that farmers have in getting workers that are authorized to work. And if E-verify is required for farmers without a workable program, we are very concerned about the potential impact on the sector. Currently in the State of Georgia, which enacted an E-verify program, you’re seeing shortages pop up there, and there’s empirical data right now that showed that if we have to deal with this program, we’re going to be in trouble.”
Schlegel acknowledges that it’s a tough argument when unemployment figures are so high. But, the bottom line is that US agriculture relies on foreign workers:
”There are people that contend that farmers don’t look hard enough or pay high enough to get workers. I spoke to a bee keepers in Colorado not long ago, they were offering $15 an hour, and they could not get workers. So, the unemployment rate does not seem to have an impact on the availability of labor. Jobs in agriculture are physically demanding, you might have to move from state to state to get those jobs. Our economist at American Farm Bureau say that there are at least 10 million people working in the economy today who accept wages lower than what they could make in agriculture because they don’t want the jobs. That’s the reality that we’re dealing with.”
Schlegel adds that congress has been promising a fix for the foreign worker program known as H2-A for 25 years but still, no fix is in sight:
”Our economic study at Farm Bureau shows that we have $5 to $9 billion a year in production that’s in jeopardy if we can’t make this system work. It would also mean a potential drop in net farm income between $1.5 and $3 billion a year. So, the impacts are enormous, we have to get it right, we have to make sure that there are changes made to the system that send production off shore. If they are going to mandate E-verify, they must give us time to adjust our processes, they also have to give us a program that works to get the workers.”
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