Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL-3) introduced the Labor Certainty for Food Security Act March 4.
Yoho said the bill separates the “toxic” ag guest worker and immigration issues.
“People are automatically enrolled in the e-verify system before they come into the country,” he said at a press conference.
“And we deal also with that group of people that are in this country illegally, we allow them to get into this program and it doesn’t prevent them from becoming a citizen, it’s not a pathway to citizenship, but it allows them to become legal in this country, and from that point, they can apply for citizenship just like anybody else.”
Yoho called the legislation a commonsense solution.
“It removes the jurisdiction of agriculture labor from the Department of Labor to the USDA.
It removes the arbitrary Department of Labor wage rates known as AEWR (Adverse Effective Wage Rate) and replaces it with a commonsense rate.”
The bill calls for biometric guest worker ID cards that designate an ag-only job for each worker, instead of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which risks losing guest workers with green cards to other non-ag work.
