You can't grow without change.
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**B Stands for Berries**

Good afternoon,

Last week, American families gathered to give thanks and partake in
delicious meals together. Without farmworkers
,
majority of which are immigrants, those meals would not be possible. The
award-winning film ,

**The Last Harvest**, produced by Farm League and funded by our friends
at Driscoll's, puts a spotlight on the critical role immigration plays
in our agricultural system.

Farms around the country are struggling to fill laborer positions -
and have been for some time. In 2019, over half of California farmers
reported

that they fell short of hiring the number of workers they needed over
the last five years. Fewer and fewer U.S. citizens want agricultural
jobs. The work is difficult, exhausting and can be dangerous.
Hand-harvesting, the method 75% of fruit in the U.S. is dependent on, is
especially demanding. Farmers have turned to immigrants to fill the
labor gaps, but that too has been a challenge.

The H-2A program
,
which allows U.S. employers to bring in foreign nationals to fill
temporary agricultural jobs, is a cumbersome, outdated and expensive
process. Less than 10%

of the immigrant agricultural workforce comes from the program. As a
result, many immigrant farmworkers are undocumented.

As **The Last Harvest** shows, without
immigrant workers, farmers cannot harvest all their produce, like
berries, fast enough. This hurts the farms, other agricultural related
industries and increases costs for customers. It also causes the U.S.
economy to miss out on as much as $3.1 billion in missed GDP growth each
year.

The takeaway: we need immigration reform to keep fresh food on our
tables.

Join us in urging Congress to provide a pathway
to legalization for undocumented farmworkers and enhance the H-2A
guestworker program. Our food supply depends on it.

Stay healthy and hopeful,

Adam

P.S. You can watch **The Last Harvest**
for free on Vimeo until the end of 2021!

**Adam Estle**
Vice President of Field and Constituencies
National Immigration Forum 

**NEWS CLIPS TO NOTE:**

**REUTERS:**UN official criticizes migrant deportations from southern
U.S. border

**NEW YORK TIMES:**For Afghan Refugees, a Choice Between Community and
Opportunity

**BLOOMBERG:**The Number of Immigrant Workers With H1-B Visas Drops the
Most in a Decade

**FRONTERAS DESK:**The Biden administration's proposed rule change on
DACA draws more than 9,000 comments

**THE HILL:**COVID-19 compounding root causes for mass migration to US:
research

 

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