Representative Laurel Lee (R-FL) celebrated the reinstatement of furloughed federal employees to process agricultural visas in a recent statement, sharing that "food security is national security."
With the government shutdown nearing 40 days, many federal employees have been furloughed, including those who process H-2A visas.
These visas are temporary admissions of foreign agricultural workers for seasonal work when domestic workers are unavailable, with Florida alone receiving 50,000 such workers per year to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops.
As a result, reinstating the employees who process these visas ensures harvests and the overall food supply are secure.
"Florida's farmers feed America, and I will never stop fighting to ensure they have the workforce and stability they need to get crops out of the ground and onto our tables," Rep. Lee said in a statement. "Thanks to the decisive leadership of President Trump and the swift action of [Labor] Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, we delivered a commonsense solution that will keep America's food supply strong during this shutdown."
In August, the Trump Administration was supposedly considering amnesty for illegal alien farm workers, which Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL) vehemently opposed.
"No, no carveouts," Rep. Donalds told Fox Business' Stuart Varney. "Look at where we are in immigration. We have really been overrun as a country," he explained. "It has happened over the last administration in the last four years. It has really overwhelmed every city, not just in Florida, but across the country. And we cannot allow to have this situation continue to metastasize with these carveouts."
More recently, Representative Scott Franklin (R-FL) led a bipartisan letter to the Department of Agriculture urging that the Sunshine State receives more immediate priority in the Department's economic aid programs.
"Many of USDA's past economic aid programs have primarily benefited row crops while specialty crop producers are forced to rely almost exclusively on ad hoc disaster assistance," Rep. Franklin explained. "Further, specialty crop producers are ineligible for many safety net and revenue support programs like the Agriculture Risk Coverage and the Price Loss Coverage programs."
