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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Monday, January 25, 2021
President Joe Biden kept his promise to immediately send an immigration proposal to Congress. But it’s not clear how high it will be on his list of legislative priorities, and two key Republicans say they doubt any large immigration bill can even pass the Senate, which is split 50-50.
Joe Biden took office at noon Wednesday as the 46th president of the United States, appealing to the nation to end its “uncivil war” and reach across partisan and urban-lines to address the “cascading crises” facing the country, starting with the COVID-19 pandemic.
In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden is sending an immigration bill to Congress that offers a pathway to citizenship for about 11 million undocumented workers, including about a million farmworkers.
President-elect Joe Biden is out with a $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal that includes some significant new food assistance provisions, including an extension through the summer of the 15% increase in SNAP benefits provided by the COVID aid package enacted in December.
Members of the American Farm Bureau Federation gathered virtually Thursday to assess the changes the organization would pursue in its lengthy policy book.
Farms that use H-2A workers will be allowed to pay them significantly lower wages under a sweeping overhaul of the program’s wage regulations announced by the Labor Department on Monday.
Joe Biden used the final presidential debate Thursday night to reiterate his pledge to submit an immigration reform bill to Congress within his first 100 days in office. In an unusual admission, he also said that failing to get a bill passed while he was vice president “was a mistake. It took too long to get it right.”
Farm groups that have been appealing to the federal government for years to address a labor shortage could finally see some action from the next Congress should Democrats win control of the government, but any expansion of access to foreign labor will likely come with strings attached.
A White House effort to lower the wages farms have to pay H-2A workers appears to have foundered amid concerns that it would put some regions at a disadvantage to others.