Immigration Trouble Not Affecting Colorado, Yet

Immigration Trouble Not Affecting Colorado, Yet

Immigration Trouble Not Affecting Colorado, Yet. I’m Greg Martin with Colorado Ag Today.

A number of western states are feeling the pinch of labor troubles after a computer glitch prevented the U.S. from issuing thousands of temporary and immigrant visas. Jason Resnick, general counsel for the Western Growers Association representing farmers in California, Arizona and Colorado explains.

RESNICK: Everything was rolling as planned and on schedule for H2-A workers who had been approved all the way through the process and getting approved to be issued visas at the consulate. Appointments were made last week for over a thousand workers but because of this hardware snafu where they were not able to do the security clearance checks for each visa applicant they can not print the visas.

This means that a lot of workers have been stuck at the border waiting and it’s been affecting California.

RESNICK: Well it is definitely affecting Washington State right now. So they have workers who are also similarly stranded in Mexico to bring in to the cherry harvest. Colorado hopefully will not be affect but they have H2-A contracts, they won’t need workers until about mid-July. If this is still going on in mid-July then this is a much bigger problem than we can understand.

Resnick says this doesn’t affect just agriculture.

RESNICK: This is a world-wide issue that’s impacting the issuance of all foreign visas and foreign passports. This is affecting all countries.

And that’s Colorado Ag Today. I’m Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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