United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack speaks at the National Farmers Union convention at the La Vista Conference Center on Monday.
JEFF BEIERMANN/THE WORLD-HERALD
Published Tuesday March 6, 2012Vilsack: Take politics out of immigration
Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.The country's financial stability and rural America's economic strength depend on resolving the nation's immigration woes, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday in suburban Omaha.
“There isn't a single American who doesn't realize this is a problem,” he said. “It's not going to go away. It's not going to get any better. It's not going to solve itself.”
The former Iowa governor made impassioned remarks on immigration to about 450 people at the National Farmers Union convention at the La Vista Conference Center and during a press conference at a Cabela's.
He said businesses across the nation face the risk of lacking the labor to process meat and other commodities, to harvest vegetables, fruits and other crops, without comprehensive immigration changes.
The Farm Foundation, an Illinois-based public policy organization, said in a report on immigration reform that although Latinos represent about one-seventh of the U.S. labor force, they are seven-eighths of U.S. crop workers and half of meatpacking workers.
“We've seen the impact of immigration raids in the past on (meatpacking) facilities processing what we raise,” Vilsack said.
Farming and America's food supply are at risk, he said.
“We're getting to a point where crops can rot because we simply don't have the people in the fields to do the work that needs to be done,” Vilsack said.
Finding a solution in the immigration debate isn't the problem, he said.
“The problem is people want to play politics with this issue,” he said. Vilsack said some people think they can gain political advantage by dividing the nation with scaremongering about immigrants.
“We know the border needs to be secured,” he said. “We know we're not going to deport 12 million people.”
He said policymakers need to find a way for illegal immigrants to acknowledge their wrongdoing, pay taxes, learn to speak and write in English, learn the rules of the country and have some way of legitimately working in the United States.
Vilsack encouraged Farmers Union members across the country to borrow from their organization's heritage of courage and to push Congress to resolve the immigration problems in a fair and transparent way.
“Take it out of politics. Get it solved,” he said. “This county is a nation of immigrants. … Yet now we're going be the first generation of Americans to say that because we're politically … afraid of what might happen at the ballot box, we're not going to stand up and do the courageous and right thing and solve this immigration issue? It's an outrage.”
Vilsack said it's not enough for individual states to attempt the tackle the problem.
“This is a national issue that requires a national response,” he said. “Congress has the capacity and the power to do it. They just need the political courage to do it.”
Contact the writer:
, david.hendee@owh.com
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