ISSUES AND POLICY
Immigration Reform
By Scott George, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association president
N
ATIONAL CATTLEMEN’S BEEF ASSOCIATION (NCBA) members have made immigration reform one of the organization’s key issues for my term
as president, so I have been pleased to see our elected offi cials also take it up as a priority. Although we are a long way from a fi nal solution, any progress on this topic is welcome. Agriculture relies on a viable workforce for our suc-
cess. In many cases that labor pool consists of migrant laborers who come for a short period of time for harvest or some other process and then move on to the next job. We depend on these workers, so a workable temporary worker program is vitally important to our future. When I was growing up, my father and a lot of
neighbors depended on migrant laborers. We would get together as a community to feed and house them and in return the laborers would thin beets, weed beans and haul hay . They were happy to do the job and have the work, and when they were done they went home. We had a viable immigration program and it worked for years. Today we’re down to just a single program for immi-
grant workers, the H2A visa program, and quite frankly it’s broken. There are so many hoops and hurdles and restrictions that it just doesn’t work for agriculture or the workers on whom we depend. There are a lot of NCBA members and members of
our state affi liates who raise other crops such as citrus or vegetables, and they need a program that can pro- vide large numbers of workers for very short periods of time, so any solution must account for those needs. However, there are many of us who need year-round help and we need it for multiple years. Feedyards, dair-
tscra.org
ies, packing plants and others can’t afford to continu- ously train new employees. We need laborers who can stay for perhaps 3 or 5 years at a stretch before they return home for their touchback to spend time with their families. I truly believe that those laborers want that, too. We
need stability in our workforce and a labor pool that is here legally so they can be identifi ed and traced and so they can take part in our economy by paying taxes. Border security is one of the cornerstones of NCBA’s
policy on immigration reform, and it must be a part of any solution from Congress. Our farmers and ranchers near the border deserve to be safe on their property and secure inside this country. I believe that an effective and workable immigra-
tion program that will allow workers to come here and help provide for their families back home will help cut the fl ow of illegal immigrants crossing the border. In turn, we’ll be more effective at halting the fl ow of people crossing illegally. It’s important to understand that we’re supporting
and expecting Congress to reform immigration pro- grams and provide legal status. That’s not the same as providing citizenship, which is an entirely different conversation and needs to stay that way. We want a workable program that provides the
stability and fl exibility we need as an industry to en- sure immigrant laborers are available when they are needed. Immigrant labor has been and will continue to be a vital part of our nation’s food security, and I would urge each of you to call your elected offi cials in Washington, D.C. and explain why we need immigra- tion reform now.
June 2013 The Cattleman 97
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