Agriculture has a target on its back when it comes to compliance with guest worker regulations, according to Eileen Scofield an immigration law attorney who held a workshop at the American Farm Bureau annual meeting this week.
“Currently there’s three agencies that focus on employers but for ag in particular there’s about five or six other separate laws which are a very big focus of the Department of Labor,” she said.
Scofield recommends that agricultural employers have a very simple, one page policy and take it very seriously. “Also, have a go-to person, a czar, so you know what is happening,” she said.
Scofield believes reform of agricultural immigration laws would be relatively easy to do compared to more comprehensive reform. “We’ve had 25 years of trying to do comprehensive which has never passed … I think it makes more sense to separate certain industries and ag is the best because it already has separate immigration laws,” she said. “To me it’s a simple carve off because it’s deemed a critical infrastructure industry but we’re not able to give it the critical workers it needs to operate.”
Listen to my interview with Eileen here: Interview with immigration attorney Eileen Scofield at AFBF