Stuck At The Border

Stuck At The Border

Stranded At The Border. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

A normally smooth two-day visa process has come to a grinding halt for farm workers from Mexico. Washington Farm Labor Association’s Dan Fazio explains how this is affecting farmers and potentially fruit harvest in the state.

FAZIO: The farmers are - in the last five years they have invested $50-million dollars in housing and they’re investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it the right way. Farmers believe that farm workers should be a priority visa. And that’s not the case.

Actor Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame last week had his visa fast tracked to make an appearance at Comic Con but farm workers being hired to pick fruit in Washington State are being stuck at the border.

FAZIO: Farmers are the only people who are responsive for paying workers prior to them getting a visa. Number one; the farmers are on the hook for every day that they’re there. Number two; the farmers are losing $500 to $1000 in productivity for the worker. I guess number one is the worker has invested a lot of money in this. The workers have invested $300 approximately to get to this point., $200 of which was paid to the U.S. government for the visa and then they get that back when they get up here. Well if they never get up here they’re not going to get that back.

As for why the visa process has stopped…

FAZIO: We’ve had three different reasons. The official reason that we got on Thursday the 24th, we were told that there was a technical glitch in the computer system on Saturday the 19th of July and only visas were basically being manually printed for emergency cases only.

WAFLA has been working with Senator Patty Murray and Representative Denny Heck’s office to get some action on this issue.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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