Biden unveils immigration plan

Biden unveils immigration plan

By Dairy Business Association

President Biden’s immigration plan, the U.S. Citizenship Act, was introduced in Congress today.

It presents a mixed bag for agriculture.

Below is a summary of the agricultural provisions. There’s also a summary of other parts of the bill.

Through its sister organization, Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, DBA is working with congressional partners to ensure any immigration bill that is passed improves members’ access to a sustainable, legal workforce. It is essential that our existing employees have a path to a legal status and that farmers have a legal way to recruit new workers from abroad. We also need to be cautious about any other provisions in a bill that could adversely affect our farmers. You can read more about the organization's policy position online here.

Agricultural provisions:

• Grants lawful permanent resident status to a noncitizen if they pass a background check and the government determines that, during the five-year period immediately preceding the date on which the noncitizen submits an application, the immigrant performed agricultural labor or services for at least 2,300 hours or 400 workdays.
• Requires overtime pay for farm workers, who are currently exempt from such rules. 
• Notably, there are no revisions to the H-2A program.

Other provisions according to The Hill: 

• Increases visa options on the family-based side of the immigration system, increasing the country caps that limit how many people can come to the U.S. from each country while also reopening roughly 200,000 unused visa slots
  from years past. 
• Lifts the three- and 10-year bars that restrict people from reentering the U.S. if they’ve overstayed their visa. 
• Focuses on clearing the immigration backlog through raising various limits and excluding partners and children from the count when the primary family member applies for a visa. 
• Ups the number of diversity visas from 55,000 to 80,000, boosting the number of immigrants from nations that otherwise have low levels of immigration to America. 
• Triples the number of visas available to those who have been the victim of certain crimes, including domestic violence, upping the number from 10,000 to 30,000. 
• Ups the number of employment-based visas from 140,000 to 170,000. 
• Includes funding to back up some of Biden’s executive orders, setting aside $4 billion in aid for Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the root causes of migration. 
• Sets aside funding for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to help clear the backlog of asylum cases.