Maine farmers struggle with labor shortage, push for immigration reform

Official Seal of Maine (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons) 

Framers across the United States have long supported some form of immigration reform.  Inflation has added to agricultural support for reform and a bill pending in Congress, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act   A news story from Maine reports that its state’s farmers and pushing for immigration reform.

Farmers in the state of Maine are joining a push for immigration reform that they say could help ease labor shortages, strengthen businesses and lower food prices. The farmers contend that a shortage of labor is making it difficult for them to plant and harvest crops and raise livestock.

A bill pending in the U.S. Senate could help relieve labor pressures in the agricultural industry. Last year, the House of Representatives passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would create a path to legalization for undocumented agricultural workers, reform the seasonal farmworker program, and seek to make employers more accountable for employing undocumented workers.

I found a comment on the story interesting and insightful:

“But wait…I thought we had a serious problem with immigration policy and we have porous borders and we need to seal them off to keep people from coming to America to use up our resources and take advantage of our social safety net programs and so forth? How can we be both under siege and at risk of being overrun and, at the same time, have a critical need for more immigrants? Could it be that there really isn’t an immigration problem and that this is all political in nature? That immigrants have been turned into the boogey man to scare voters into doing the bidding of those who stand to benefit most from said bidding? Talk to a Maine farmer, hotelier and restauranteur. Ask them how their staffing levels have been since about…oooohhhh…2016. You’ll find that they have been suffering due to politically motivated policy changes that make it extremely difficult for migrant workers to come and work. All under the guise of what? That these people are taking our jobs from us? HAHAHA! OK.”

KJ