One day it’s off, and then the next it’s back on. That’s been President Trump’s stand on immigration enforcement on farms of late, confusing many farmworkers and their employers.
But Washington Representative Dan Newhouse says being an undocumented foreign guestworker is against the law.
“As a member of Congress, I can’t tell federal agencies to, you know, ignore the law, right? That’s their job to enforce the law. But we can be smart about how we enforce it, and I think the President recognizes that.”
So now, Newhouse says this might be our chance to fix some long-standing problems with the H-2A guestworker visa program.
“As you can imagine, members of Congress are hearing from their farm employers around the country that this is a huge headache for them to have the workers not showing up because of their fear of being deported. People recognize that we need these people, and so, we’re seeing this as an opportunity.”
An opportunity, Newhouse says, for a solution.
“The President, I think, is going to be very open to some of the ideas that we have to solve this problem once and for all. So, where I think it’s headed is to a solution, finally, for what agriculture, the agricultural industry needs and has needed for a long time.”
And Newhouse says this is up to Congress to find the solution once and for all.