Push is on to improve U.S. system to ease hiring of foreign farm workers

There was a time when Tracy Pope didn't have to worry about finding enough people to harvest the bell peppers, tobacco, squash and zucchini springing forth from his 500 acres of farmland. Pope, a fourth-generation farmer, used to rely on family, neighbors, teens and a few hired hands to turn out for picking season. But locals increasingly find better work for the same pay outside the fields, so Pope does what many farmers do in America: He hires foreign workers. Unlike many farmers, he does it legally by going through a federal program that gives temporary work permits, known as H2A visas, to non-U.S. citizens to work on farms, ranches and vineyards across the country. Yet the process is so bureaucratic that Pope pays a firm specializing in the visas to handle the daunting paperwork and the considerable investment in time required to get them. "I would eventually do something wrong, whether I knew it or not," he said of his attempts to comply with the regulatory process. As the White House and Congress try to settle on the first major overhaul of immigration laws in a quarter-century, a point of simple agreement would appear to be that the nation's crop producers need a legal and reliable pool of workers. Otherwise, produce will be left rotting in the fields. This is the one piece of the immigration puzzle that affects all Americans, as the stability and affordability of the food supply is at stake. Members of Congress keenly aware of this problem say that if they can't reach agreement on farm visas, there will be little hope for any meaningful progress on immigration...more