Angie Craig: “We recognize the need for a fence. We recognize the need for border security. But as we speak, American agriculture is…”

“We recognize the need for a fence. We recognize the need for border security. But as we speak, American agriculture is losing somewhere between $1 billion and $5 billion at the farm gate because our southern border is closing. We have troops at the border. We are investing now nearly $2 billion a year at the border. This Congress, this Government, wants to prove, as we must, to the American people that we mean it when we say we are going to secure our southern border. But I have said for 2 years that, in doing that, we had to tie the cart and the horse together; that is, we needed to provide for the American economy a legal guestworker program. We have not done that. We are not doing that. In my State of Idaho now, there is an 18 to 20 percent reduction in the employment base in agriculture as we speak. In the State of Kentucky, the tobacco growers cooperative is now losing their tobacco crop because they have nobody to pick. In Illinois, in the orchards at this time, apples are rotting on the trees. In Florida, it is estimated that we have already lost nearly a billion dollars worth of oranges. Is this the fault of American agriculture or is this the fault of a Congress that would not take an obsolete and functional law and fix it, so that we could have a legal workforce, one that comes and works and goes fast. That is what a guestworker program is all about.”