News
MOSES LAKE (AP) — Farmers and farm groups need to speak up soon about their labor needs before Congress enacts sweeping immigration reform in the coming days, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray told a roundtable of agricultural interests.
The Senate could begin debating legislation to reform immigration — an issue of "hot political rhetoric" among lawmakers — as early as next week, Murray said Monday, and growers need to "gin up" information to ensure their needs are met.
"What I want is real immigration reform, and not just one that works for one area," the Washington state Democrat said. "This has been a silent issue for quite some time, and now is not the time to be silent."
Murray visited with farmers and several agricultural groups at Big Bend Community College for two hours Monday to discuss a variety of issues, including transportation, food labeling, rising fuel prices and the looming 2007 budget. But it was immigration reform and concerns about a labor shortage that dominated the discussion.
Last year, drought and the reduced size of some crops enabled many growers to avert a labor shortage. Not so for everyone, though, said Mike Robinson, a Royal City orchardist and general manager of Stemilt Agricultural Services.
One farm needed 150 workers to harvest organic apples last year. The farm "could never break 100," Robinson said, and the fruit ripened too long on the trees.
In those cases, growers often don't feel the impact of a labor shortage until they see how much fruit doesn't qualify for packing, he said.
"I guess, for me, the problem isn't theoretical. It happened last year," he said.
Already, 5,000 bins of Granny Smith apples have been thrown away because the fruit wasn't picked in a timely fashion last year, said Jon Wyss, an analyst for Gebbers Farms in Brewster, north of Wenatchee in north-central Washington.
And Gebbers Farms and Stemilt represent two of the three largest apple growers in the United States — making labor a critical issue for the state's industry, he said.
Tensions at the U.S.-Mexico border and national security have made immigration reform a charged, emotional issue among lawmakers. The U.S. House already passed a strict immigration bill that would force undocumented workers to leave the country and includes no provision for a guest-worker program, Murray said. A similar bill has been proposed in the Senate.
Farmers have said — and repeated again Monday — that any attempt at immigration reform must include a guest-worker program.
The issue is complex and emotional, Murray said, adding, "I fear Congress is not going to do the right thing." For that reason, she said, farmers need to speak up en masse.
In the meantime, Robinson is among several growers looking to hire as many as 1,000 seasonal farm workers from Mexico this year under a federal guest-worker program.
The program, called H-2A, allows farmers to bring in foreign workers temporarily if they can prove a labor shortage exists.
Several growers in central Washington's Yakima Valley have brought in as many as 100 workers from Thailand each of the past two summers to meet labor needs. A California labor contractor, Global Horizons, provided the workers, but the company has since had its business license revoked over wage and tax violations. The company is appealing.
The growers seeking to bring in additional workers from Mexico are working through the Washington Growers League and the Northwest Growers Association, a nonprofit labor contracting firm, Robinson said.
Many growers have argued the H-2A program is too slow and inflexible, as well as costly. Growers are required to provide housing and pay a minimum of $9.03 per hour.
Labor groups, meanwhile, counter that the program leaves workers dependent on a single employer, and can make it difficult for them to complain about work conditions.