AP turns to UC for ag labor comment

Julianna Barbassa of the Associated Press in San Francisco went to UC ANR specialist Howard Rosenberg for comment on a story about an growing need for ag employers to be sure their employees are in the U.S. legally. The story was published yesterday on Ontario's dailybulletin.com and other media outlets.

"Growers are painting a bleak picture of their industry under new federal regulations that pressure employers to fire illegal immigrants," Barbassa wrote in the story.

Rosenberg, farm labor management and policy specialist at the UC Berkeley Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, manages a Web page that tracks farm employee news, policies and laws.

He told AP that the Bush administration's pronouncement doesn't change the law, it just adds a promise of enforcement that alters the odds of the gamble farmers take whenever they hire a new worker.

It's long been illegal to hire and retain anyone not authorized to work in the United States. Farmers take their chances that documents presented by the 1.6 million farmworkers hired around the country are valid or won't be closely examined, Barbassa paraphrased Rosenberg.

"The risks (of hiring illegal immigrants) have been getting higher, and if the pronouncements that accompanied this rule bear out, then they become higher yet," Rosenberg is quoted in the article.

Howard Rosenberg

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