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Ag groups split over latest House labor bill

While some members of Congress and agricultural groups have been working hard to pass an agricultural labor bill before the August recess, one agricultural group is thanking its members for killing it. Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, an association representing growers of more than half the produce in the U.S., sent an email to hundreds of his members July 13 thanking them for lobbying against the revised Ag and Legal Workforce Act of House Judiciary Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va. “We have been informed that the U.S. House of Representatives will NOT vote on legislation next week that would impose mandatory E-Verify (electronic verification of employment eligibility) with no fix for  our existing workers,” Nassif wrote.  House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., promised several members of Congress, including Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., to hold a vote on a stand-alone ag labor bill before the August recess, which starts July 27, in exchange for them not backing a maneuver last month that would have allowed votes on Democratic immigration bills. Newhouse said the Ag and Legal Workforce Act, which he helped draft, will be introduced this week and that a vote will happen. The bill provides that illegal immigrants who qualify for a new H-2C-visa guestworker program would obtain visas, then “touchback” in their country of origin and have up to a year to re-enter the U.S. as guestworkers.Nassif said H-2C is an improvement over H-2A for growers using the guestworker program, but H-2C is not workable for many California growers who rely on domestic workers, many of whom are illegal.“The bill would require all of those workers — and we could have 400,000 to 500,000 here in California — to stand up and say we are here illegally, so deport my spouse and convert me to a guestworker,” Nassif said. “Some of them have been here for decades. Our growers tell us that workers tell them they would rather continue living in the shadows than convert to H-2C. So we can’t support a bill that would cause us to lose our workforce.”

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Capital Press
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