BOISE, Idaho — This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
Rick Naerebout, Idaho Dairymen’s Association CEO, told a group of lawmakers and agricultural industry leaders Tuesday that he’d hoped the gathering would be more of a celebration.
Most of those gathered, which included U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho; state Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, and leaders from the Idaho Farm Bureau, Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, and others, had met the year before to discuss ongoing issues to address the agricultural labor crisis.
Simpson and Guthrie have made some progress in their efforts to address immigration reform and agriculture workforce shortages — but their proposals didn’t cross the finish line. The theme of the American Business Immigration Coalition roundtable, held Tuesday in Boise, was there’s more work to be done and the stakeholders involved will continue to prioritize the issue.
“What agriculture needs is a stable, reliable workforce,” Simpson said, “and I will tell you, this is the No. 1 priority I have over the next two years.”
The congressman along with Eastern Washington Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse co-sponsored the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would expand a temporary visa program for seasonal migrant workers to be used year-round; it would also provide an avenue for workers with a history of farm work to gain legal status.
The bill has passed with bipartisan support in the U.S. House of Representatives twice but stalled in the Senate.
U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, with Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, had been the lead negotiators in the Senate, NPR reported. Crapo’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Enrique Sanchez, intermountain state director at American Business Immigration Coalition, called on the Senate to “do its job” and said protecting the agricultural workforce is critical for food security in America. He also said that, as a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and son of a migrant farm worker, he’s familiar with their struggles. Sanchez said his father’s undocumented status prevented him from being able to return to Mexico for Sanchez’s birth.
“I share my story to shed light on the experience of farm workers who strive for the American dream, and to remind everyone here that my story is one of hundreds of similar stories in Idaho and across the country,” Sanchez said.
Simpson also said there are dire economic impacts to not addressing the immigration issue, such as increasing food prices as more food is imported than produced domestically, and underscored that there’s also a humanitarian impact at the center of the issue.
He told a story of a farm worker who had been with a company for 19 years when he was suddenly deported after trying to renew his driver’s license.
“Something’s wrong with that,” Simpson said. “Creating that legal workforce, so if you’re here working at a dairy or with a farmer or something else, and your mother dies in Honduras, you can actually go home to her funeral and come back. That’s what’s important about this.”
At the state level, Guthrie this session sponsored a bill that would have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain a limited driver’s license as well as a Senate Joint Memorial that called on Congress to tackle immigration reform, including allowing the guest-worker visa program to apply to year-round jobs. He’s been working on the restricted license issue for several years now, and this session, SB 1081 was passed out of committee without a recommendation in an unusual move. It was retained on the Senate’s calendar and eventually sent back to committee without a debate or vote on the floor.
The memorial, SJM 101, passed the Senate in a 25-10 vote and was referred to the House Agricultural Affairs Committee, where it never had a hearing. He told the Idaho Press that there’s likely going to be another effort on the issue in the future.
Guthrie said that as he’s worked on the issue, he’s found that some of his colleagues in the Statehouse find immigration to be too “politically toxic” to take on.
“If you mention the border, if you mention immigration and, heaven forbid, you mention undocumented immigrants, you’ll get the door slammed in your face quicker than a vacuum cleaner salesman back in the ‘70s,” Guthrie said. “... But what we found is, an issue like this takes courage, and I’m not talking about my courage. I’m talking about the courage of the businesses, of the industry.”
He talked about the widespread support from those in agriculture, including the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, the Idaho Farm Bureau and PODER Idaho, which gathered 8,000 signatures of support for the license bill and presented them during the committee hearing.
“Pretty soon the ability to deny is not going to be able to resonate any longer, “ Guthrie said.
Simpson and Guthrie said it will take a large communication and educational effort to get people to understand the severity of the issue and that there is wide popular support for addressing it. Both said they had colleagues who privately expressed support for their proposals but weren’t willing to vote for them.
Both lawmakers said they felt it was a small but vocal group of people who simply want to deport all immigrants rather than provide avenues for legalization.
“Paranoia sells,” Guthrie said. “If you can instill fear in people, it resonates, it sells. … That loud minority voice is instilling fear.”
He said it was important to change the narrative.
Simpson said it wasn’t enough for just the leaders of industry groups to write in to legislators expressing support, but every individual farmer or producer needed to do so too.
Alex LaBeau, Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, said the issue affects more than just the agricultural industry. He talked about how this idea hit home during a recent visit to New York City.
“When you go to the Statue of Liberty and when you’re there with your kid and you start to remind them that this country was founded on immigration,” LaBeau said. “ ... the very survival of this country is going to be dependent on immigration reform and our ability to bring people in for the workforce.”
Simpson said his path forward is to probably re-introduce his bill and see what the House Judiciary Committee does with it. He said drafting another bill to address some of the committee Republicans’ concerns would likely cause it to lose the bipartisan support it has.
“It has to be bipartisan if it’s going to pass,” he said.
He also said there needs to be a focus on the personal impacts of the lack of immigration reform. His chief of staff, Nikki Wallace, told a story of a 16-year-old girl who became distraught during a discussion in the office on immigration. Wallace said the girl began shaking, and when Wallace asked her privately what the issue was, she said she was worried she’d be deported to a country she didn’t know anything about.
“When we’re talking about this issue and how can we be successful, we’ve got to bring the human issue back to it,” Wallace said. “That is the most uncaring thing, is for this child to be fearful of what’s going to happen to her, if she’s going to end up in a country that she doesn’t know the language or people or anything ... We have to do better for these kids, for people.”
Simpson highlighted that the jobs that migrant workers are taking are not ones that Americans are applying for. To participate in the H-2b visa program, employers must ensure that no qualified U.S. workers are available for the opening.
He also said that while people focus on what’s going on at the border, it’s important to remember that many undocumented people are already living and working in communities and the issues are separate.
“People need to stop and think about this,” Simpson said. “These are people that are in our communities that have been for years, that are our neighbors.”
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
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