News Release

Potato Growers Urge Senate To Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill

BLACKFOOT, Idaho—The Potato Growers of Idaho (PGI) is urging the U.S. Senate to pass Senate Bill 1348, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007.

Although the bill is not perfect, and represents compromises from both Democrats and Republicans alike, PGI acknowledges the comprehensive bill in its original form does address key priorities for potato growers and agriculture in general, namely the need for a reliable and predictable agricultural labor force of dependable hardworking individuals.

“Growers do not prefer one group of workers over another as long as they are willing to come out and get the job done day-in and day-out,” said PGI Executive Director Keith Esplin. “The problem we have is not our inability to find good workers, but the unavailability of workers in general. Already during spring planting, many potato growers had a difficult time finding sufficient help. If growers are having a hard time during the spring, the problem will only be magnified during fall harvest when labor needs are even greater.”

According to the Department of Idaho Commerce and Labor, Idaho’s unemployment rate, currently at 2.3 percent, has been below 3 percent for four straight months and has been under 4 percent for over two years, which most economists consider to be full employment. Because farm labor needs are mostly seasonal, growers are having a difficult time attracting workers because many already have jobs that employ them year round and offer more stability.

The tight labor market is adversely impacting many industries, but agriculture continues to be one of the hardest hit.

“Farming is unlike any other business. Most businesses are price makers, and can pass on additional increased costs to their customers by raising the price of their services or finished products, which allows them more flexibility to pay higher wages,” said PGI president Ray Hess. “Farmers are price takers. They get what the market is willing to give them, which often is barely above or at the cost of production. Most growers are already paying higher wages to attract workers, and it is hurting their bottom line. That is the nature of farming these days.”

“Our wages have to compete with landscape and construction companies if we expect to get any help. We can’t raise our prices, but we still have to compete with everyone else,” added Hess.

PGI believes the Senate’s comprehensive bill addresses many of the critical components in a legal and realistic way. It aims to bolster border security, provides a workable guest worker program to solve both current and future labor needs essential to supporting a robust and growing economy, and outlines a common sense approach to address the question of what to do with the more than 12 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States.

“Deporting all the illegal immigrants would be equivalent to deporting a population the size of New York City or the entire state of Pennsylvania. It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Marc Gibbs, a potato seed grower from Grace, Idaho, who recently attended an Immigration Fly-in in Washington, D.C. to ask congressional leaders to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that addresses agriculture’s labor shortage.

The Senate’s comprehensive bill in its original form includes the most recent iteration of AgJOBS, which promotes extensive changes to the agricultural guest worker program, and is strongly endorsed by PGI.

PGI recognizes that the time to improve the current immigration policies is now. If immigration policies are not reformed this year, many believe any future actions could be delayed until 2009, until after the upcoming presidential and congressional elections in 2008 due to the politically sensitive and divisive nature of the issue.

“Today’s immigration system is too broken to be ignored any longer,” said Esplin. “From an agricultural perspective, the issue cannot wait another two or three years for the system to be corrected. Rising input costs, such as fuel and fertilizer, coupled with increasing competition from foreign markets has made farmers more reliant on an affordable and dependable labor force to help them get their crop to market. If comprehensive immigration reform is not passed, the current shortage of farm laborers will only get worse.”

“The time to act is now,” added Esplin.