Our farmers crops are dying in the fields. We cannot allow a real solution to die on the vine. In recent meetings with scores of New York farmers from across the State. it was stressed to me that the current worker program in placethe H2A legal guest worker program is antiquated. unworkable. and woefully inadequate. Couple this with the recent increases in enforcement by the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. and the result has been major disruptions to our farms. I join with many of my colleagues in this Chamber who believe that workplace enforcement is imperative. But as we all know. our current laws are broken. and enforcement has been inadequate and haphazard at best. We know this because we have been debating reforms for months. some of us for years. These increases in enforcement have left our farmers reeling. Day to day. they do not know whether their labor force will show up for work. whether their workers have been apprehended by Immigration and Custom Enforcement or whether they have simply fled the area out of fear of apprehension. Whatever the cause. the result is our farms are being paralyzed. It is worth noting that the farmers I have spoken with are trying in good faith to obey the law.
Keywords matched
H2A Immigration