Immigration issues have long been a source of great controversy, and new immigration legislation is just around the corner that will affect the farming industry.

According to The Washington Post’s article, Senate immigration bill would set up a new permanent agriculture worker program , as of now, at least 50 percent and as much as 70 or 80 percent of the nation’s farm workers are here illegally.

New work visa programs are currently in discussion in the Senate after union worker groups and labor groups finally came to an agreement on changes. For the agriculture industry, the solution senators are pushing for is a “blue card” visa that would grant legal status to farm workers who have worked in the farming industry for at least two years and plan to continue working in this industry for at least five additional years.

Currently, the program available for farm workers is the H2A visa. This work visa is a 10-month program for farmer workers; however, one of the flaws that growers find with the program is the time it takes to complete all the necessary paperwork for the H2A visa. By the time the paperwork is completed, submitted and approved the work on that year’s harvest could be over, according to the Washington Post article.

The last change to the farm program came in 1986 which resulted in the H2A visa.

This program missed out on a few key components that would make it viable for today’s industry. “The problem we have on the ground today with a 50 to 70 percent unauthorized labor force in agriculture is a direct reflection of what was missing in the bill that passed in 1986,” said Craig J. Regelbrugge, co-chair of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, in the Washington Post article.  “We made our bed and have been lying in it ever since so this is a chance to get it right and not repeat those failures.”

New legislation could help growers hire labor legally, and at the same time provide better protection for workers.

Non-agricultural industries also face work visa changes

In addition to recreating the H2A work visa for farm workers, the Senate is also pushing for a new program for non-agriculture workers. For this program, the “W Visa” worker program would qualify foreign workers to work in non-seasonal, non-agricultural, low-skilled occupations. After one year under the W Visa, a worker would be eligible to seek permanent status, according to AgProfessional.com’s article, Outlook improves dramatically for U.S. immigration deal .

Controversy surrounds the new legislation on a variety of causes ranging from not allowing enough immigrants to use the program to not helping the unemployment rate in America.