Farmers in Pennsylvania who voted for the president are now urgently seeking labor solutions — and Rep. G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania), chair of the House Agriculture Committee, is working on a solution, reports Samuel Benson of Politico.
In Tioga County, farmers are expressing their frustration as job listings go unanswered and migrant labor dries up amid large drops in available immigrant labor.
“People don’t understand that if we don’t get more labor, our cows don’t get milked and our crops don’t get picked,” said Tim Wood, a dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Farm Bureau board member.
The U.S. agricultural workforce dwindled by 155,000 workers between March and July of this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Additionally, research from the Pew Research Center the immigrant labor force fell by 750,000 from January to July, notes Benson [a former Forum intern].
Meanwhile, in a challenging look at the abuses some migrant workers endure, Max Blau and Zaydee Sanchez of ProPublica report on the trafficking of a woman who was trying to get an H-2A agricultural visa and work for a future for her young son.
Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s VP of strategic communications, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Masooma Amin, Jillian Clark, Nicci Mattey and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected].
ASYLUM SEA CHANGE — The United States is planning to ask the United Nations for a “major shift” globally on asylum rights, report Ted Hesson and Jonathan Landay of Reuters. The changes would upend the post-World War II structure and rules for humanitarian protections. Per a State Department spokesperson, the proposals include requiring individuals to seek asylum in the first country they enter and making asylum temporary, with the host country deciding whether and when home-country conditions had improved enough for return.
FINDING ON DENIED FUNDS — The Government Accountability Office has found that by denying payouts for two grant programs meant to help with migrant housing and homelessness, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defied the Impoundment Control Act, reports Ellen M. Gilmer of Bloomberg Law. The law limits how much a president can withhold money that Congress already appropriated.
LEGAL-STATUS HURDLES — New U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policies make it more difficult to gain legal status in the United States, reports Julián Aguilar of the Houston Chronicle. These changes are causing alarm for some immigrants and immigration advocates. One change is special attention being paid to the “good moral character” of applicants, Aguilar reports. “The way it's written is incredibly broad and incredibly subjective and it's going to lead to so many such inconsistent results,” said attorney John Dutton.
BRAVE PATRIOTS — The story of a local Medal of Honor recipient, Lt. Baldomero Lopez, shows the bravery and sacrifice of immigrants in military service, Luis Viera writes in a Tampa Bay Times op-ed. Lopez was the son of Spanish immigrants and a U.S. Marine who sacrificed his life to save the lives of his fellow Marines in the Battle of Inchon, during the Korean War. “Lopez was a patriotic son of immigrants who heroically gave all,” Viera writes. “It is a tragic tradition that the immigrant hands that built our country are questioned, especially on patriotism.”
