National Milk Producer Federation members are supporting a new approach to immigration reform to solve the labor shortage in the dairy industry. Federation’s Vice President of Government Relations Paul Bleiberg says they’re backing an amendment attached to the House’s 2020 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill. It includes year-round employees on farms in the H-2A farm worker visa program.
Bleiberg says his group will be pushing the Senate to make sure the final appropriations bill for homeland security includes the H-2A amendment.
He says half of the workers on dairy farms are foreign born and need a pathway to citizenship. He says they also need a federal program that helps them achieve that.
Dairy farmers have not been able to use the H-2A visa program because it currently restricts them to temporary and seasonal labor needs of agricultural employers.
