|
Statement of Nancy Foster, president & CEO, U.S. Apple Association, on Senate immigration plan
Story Date: 4/18/2013
| |
Source: PRESS RELEASE, 4/17/13
The U.S. Apple Association strongly supports the agreement on agricultural immigration reform introduced in legislation sponsored by Senator XXX with important bipartisan cosponsors. Apple growers face a labor crisis and need immigration reform to ensure that America’s apple crop can be harvested each year.
Each American apple – over 20 billion—must be picked by hand in over 36 states. This includes apples sold in large retail chains and small local farm markets, apples eaten by school children and apples made into applesauce served in hospitals. At a time when doctors tell us we should eat apples and other produce for health, these apples should be grown by American farmers, not foreign growers. And we need a reliable and skilled workforce to do that.
Large apple growers typically need more than 1,000 harvest workers while smaller growers might only need five or ten. Collectively, we must have over 70,000 harvest workers to get the crop off of the trees each year. The apple industry also plays a major role in rural economies, with each of these harvest workers supporting two to three other employees in jobs like sales, marketing and transportation.
The old saying, “As American as apple pie,” will be obsolete unless this labor crisis is solved. That’s because we’ll import our fruit and export our jobs to foreign orchards. The top priority for apple growers is passing legislation that ensures America’s apple orchards have the labor they need, when they need it. Mother Nature cannot wait for workers that might – or might not - show up. A major problem is that the current guest worker program is broken beyond repair. This bill sets up a workable program and provides a legal way for undocumented agricultural labor to work on our farms. For these reasons, we are pleased to support this bill’s provisions for agriculture labor reform.
|
|
|
|
