Immigration and farm labor are also top of mind as the new Administration prepares to take office. There are big concerns around what deportations would do to the ag workforce but Washington Representative Dan Newhouse says the ag industry needs legal workers.
“I’ve been saying for several years now that agriculture, 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 he recognizes the need for foreign workers, and he says more of his colleagues are, too. He is hopeful the new Administration’s actions at the southern border will make a difference.
“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 we do at the Southern border.”
To try and help with the labor situation, Newhouse filed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act in 2021. It has failed to gain much traction over the years, but Newhouse says it has been making progress in recent months.
