Congress should create a visa program, valid for at least three years, for foreigners willing to work year-round on poultry farms or in meatpacking and processing plants, an industry group said on Tuesday.
The meat industry coalition pushed for the work visa as a way to assure "a stable and permanent" workforce, during a House of Representatives hearing on potential replacements for the current H-2A guestworker program, which issues visas for up to 10 months for farm labor, such as those picking fruit and vegetables.
Many or even most of the 1.5 million agricultural laborers in the United States are thought to be undocumented.
Chairman Bob Goodlatte of the House Judiciary Committee, who is from a poultry-growing region of Virginia, said designing a work program for agriculture was a critical part of overall U.S. immigration reform.
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