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Beware the unintended consequence. Thats the lesson unfolding in the upstate agriculture industry as farmers deal with the collateral damage of the Trump administrations crackdown on illegal immigration.

Legal immigrants perform critical labor on farms around the country, including upstate and Western New York. They pick apples, plant crops, tend animals. But they are worried even though they are here legally about being questioned, misclassified or harassed by law enforcement. That worries their employers, who value the labor of their workers, and it hurts local merchants when potential patrons fear traveling away from their farms.

Unless Americans want to pay more for their food and does anyone think they do? the problem cannot be allowed to fester. Congress needs to improve the guest worker program that makes farming possible and, more fundamentally, agree to an immigration reform plan that relieves this issue permanently.

The national meltdown over immigration legal and illegal is the root of the problem on upstate farms. Suspicion follows even legal workers laboring here under the authority of the governments H-2A visa program, which authorizes guest workers. Those people typically do hard, physical, low-paid work from which many Americans recoil.

But the backlash against immigrants is complicating life for farmers, who worry they wont be able to keep their help or, worse, wont be able to find it at all, as the national mood drives down the number of people willing to work in fear.

The first solution to this problem is to streamline the H-2A program, making it easier for immigrants to make use of it, ensuring that compliance rules are simple and taking steps to protect visa holders from legal threats. Its not just the right thing to do for workers that we need, but for farmers who hire them and shoppers who consume the goods they plant and pick.

Even more important, though, is for the country to get past its stalemate over illegal immigration. Its a real issue, of course, and needs to be attended to, but its not the most important matter on the national agenda. Whats more, it is one that can be resolved by people of good will in both parties who are willing to focus on facts.

First is that the country simply isnt going to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Americans will not stand by as good people are abused and families are torn apart. We need a better answer, very much like the one that the Senate approved in 2013. Give illegal immigrants a path to legal status or citizenship that requires payment of back taxes, possibly a fine and getting in line behind those who are here legally. Thats not unreasonable.

Some wont hear of that, insisting that all who are here illegally must be sent packing for the sake of a legal purity that is rarely applied in other contexts. At some point, though, reality must intrude. That doesnt mean no one can be deported. Illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes should certainly be ejected, for example. And modern technology sensors, drones and so on can be used to protect the borders, far more effectively than a wall ever could. Acknowledging the fact of illegal immigrants doesnt obviate the need for sensible and effective border security.

Finding a resolution that most Americans can accept is the only way to puncture this boil on our civic life. The extremists need to be politely turned away so that people with common sense and good hearts can attend to a problem that is dragging millions into its unnecessary vortex.

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Editorial: We need a better guest worker program, and immigration reform - Buffalo News

Jim Bogart Published 7:00 p.m. PT May 10, 2017 | Updated 7:01 p.m. PT May 10, 2017

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As everyone knows, the need for significant and comprehensive immigration reform is long overdue. I personally have been going back to Washington D.C. for more than twenty years advocating for much-needed changes to our immigration laws. So have many of my colleagues in agriculture including, but not limited to: growers, shippers, processors, packers, harvesters, and fellow farm organization representatives.

A decade after the Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed and signed into law in 1986, we in agriculture realized major modifications and improvements were necessary to provide those who produce our nations fruits and vegetables access to a legal and stable workforce. Agriculture has been on the front lines of this fight since day one.

Yet, I continue to be amazed and disappointed when I read or hear: Where is ag on this issue? Why isnt ag doing more? Why isnt ag supporting its workers? Why isnt ag more visible and more engaged in this debate?

Let me set the record straight no one has worked longer or harder on immigration reform than those of us in agriculture. From the outset we have made clear that immigration reform must protect the workers already here by adjusting their legal status to allow them to stay here and be eligible to work here. Our members have not only communicated this message to the President (past and present) and Congress (past and present) but also to our workers.

Weve provided information and guidance to agricultural employers on what to do if U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows up for an inspection or audit of 1-9 Forms.

More importantly, weve provided a written summary of legal rights and protections workers have should they be questioned or detained by ICE or other federal officials.

The ag industry has been instrumental in forming the National Council of Agricultural Employers, the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration Reform, and the Agricultural Workforce Coalition. These three organizations are focused on one thing achieving comprehensive immigration reform.

And we may finally be making some headway. Recent developments and statements have given me some cautious optimism. For example, an Executive Order issued April 25 promoting agriculture and rural prosperity specifically charges the task force created to guide this effort to ensure access to a reliable workforce and increase employment opportunities in agriculture-related and rural-focused businesses. Translation: give agriculture access to a legal, stable, and experienced workforce.

Just a few weeks ago, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that ICE will not focus its efforts on illegal immigrants who have, other than entering the country illegally, abided by our nations laws. The Attorney Generals comments confirm what we in the agriculture industry have understood to be the Administrations interior enforcement policy: ICE activities will be directed toward deporting felons, not farm workers.

Just last week, the Agricultural Worker Program Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate. While any solution to fix our broken immigration system must be comprehensive, this legislation elevates an issue often overlooked in the debate: Retention of the existing agricultural workforce.

If this bill can lead to a broader discussion that acknowledges the contributions and value of current farm workers while creating a workable program to enable the future flow of labor to American farms, I believe we are well on our way to an effective and, hopefully, bipartisan solution to this decades-long problem.

These comments and recent developments are a direct result of efforts made by agriculture. Yet, for some reason, this goes unnoticed, unreported, and overlooked despite repeated attempts by those of us in the industry to communicate these facts to elected officials, the media, and the community. My fear is that this is because ags message doesnt advance a particular narrative or square with a particular ideological agenda. Be that as it may, it will not prevent us from continuing to fight the good fight to protect our agricultural workforce. Its a battle that weve been waging and leading for a long time, but its well worth it.

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Ag leading fight for immigration reform - The Salinas Californian

In the wee hours of the morning on May 1, 2017, Congress passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill to fund the federal government through September 2017. However, while the pundits on Capitol Hill hailed this as a wonderful bipartisan bill that proves both parties can work together, further examination of the bill shows that illegal aliens win and American citizens loose again!

President Trump has signed 90 executive actions since he took office in January 2017 six of which dealt specifically with immigration. But most of the changes the president has tried to implement regarding immigration and refugee intake have been temporarily thwarted by activist judges, ignored by state and local government officials in sanctuary jurisdictions or shot down by Congress.

With President Trump in office, its supposed to be time to cut-off incentives for illegal immigration, beef up enforcement at the border and the interior of the country, and increase the threat of deportation for illegal aliens especially those who have committed heinous crimes against American citizens. It should also be high time to clean up the immigration mess left by the Obama administration. The spending bill was supposed to be part of that process but the Republican leadership in Congress gave up without a fight. So did the administration, although the president later hinted in a Tweet that he will be prepared to do so as the FY 2018 budget is negotiated. But that remains to be seen.

President Trump asked for money to build a wall in the spending bill. He also wanted to cutoff certain federal funding to sanctuary cities. The president has tried to deliver on some of his campaign promises through the use of executive action, but other much needed reforms require Congress to act.

American citizens must continue to keep the pressure on Congress and stand behind President Trumpto make sure hekeeps his promiseson immigration reform.

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Congress Has Failed Again | Immigration Reform Blog - ImmigrationReform.com (blog)

Farah Larrieux feels like she's about to be forced out after living and working in the U.S. for more than a decade. Immigration privileges granted to her and many other Haitians after the 2010 earthquake could soon be revoked.

President Donald Trump's appointees must announce by May 23 whether to continue "temporary protected status" for about 50,000 Haitians legally living and working in the U.S. Without this status, they could suddenly face deportation.

A top immigration official has argued that Haiti is stable enough for its citizens to no longer need protection from deportation. According to emails obtained by The Associated Press , Trump appointees are looking for evidence that Haitian immigrants have committed crimes before announcing the decision.

As President Barack Obama's administration repeatedly extended the benefits for Haitians, Florida came to feel like a permanent home to Larrieux.

"I am planning my life, settling down. I can tell you that I am financially getting stable but now I don't know what's going to happen in the next three months," she said.

Four years after Larrieux arrived in Florida in 2005, she had been divorced and depressed. Her visa had expired, and her green card application was rejected. The post-quake benefits gave her a lifeline: She got a Florida driver's license, returned to school and built a company promoting Haitian entertainers from her home in Miramar.

"It was a rebirth," she said.

According to James McCament, President Donald Trump's acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Haiti's poverty, political instability, infrastructure problems and cholera outbreak no longer qualify its citizens for a program responding to countries in crisis.

"Those myriad problems remaining in Haiti are longstanding problems which have existed for many years before the 2010 disaster," McCament wrote in an April 10 memo first reported by USA Today. His recommendation: end the status once current benefits expire July 22, and give the Haitians until January to leave voluntarily.

The AP obtained emails sent from April 7 to May 1 showing a USCIS policy chief repeatedly asking staff how often Haitians with temporary status were convicted of crimes and how many took advantage of public benefits. Her employees replied that such data weren't available or difficult to find in government records.

USCIS spokeswoman Sharon Scheidhauer said the agency doesn't discuss "pre-decision documents." She said Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly hadn't made a decision regarding Haiti.

A criminal history disqualifies an applicant for temporary protected status, and recipients aren't eligible for public benefits, so Trump is "not going to be able to find the evidence he's looking for, and if he does, it's fake news," Cheryl Little of Americans for Immigrant Justice said Tuesday.

Haitian-American leaders and Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Rodrigue said deporting established property owners, entrepreneurs, students, taxpayers and the parents of U.S.-born children could cut off their remittances, financially crippling a country where the quake killed up to 300,000, cholera has killed least 9,500 since 2010 and Hurricane Matthew's landfall killed 546 in October.

Immigrant rights advocates say the U.S. economy also would suffer. Deporting the affected Haitians could cost $469 million, and $428 million in contributions to Social Security and Medicare would be lost over the next decade, according to estimates by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

"These people are working. They are contributing. They have lives here," said Marleine Bastien, of Haitian Women of Miami. "This is one of the gravest crises we've been facing since the earthquake."

Temporary protected status allows immigrants from countries experiencing armed conflict or environmental disasters to legally live and work here. To be eligible, Haitians had to live in the U.S. before Jan. 12, 2011. Residency and employment authorizations were renewed every 18 months.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors strict immigration policies, said Haitians never should have expected permanent privileges.

"There is always going to be something happening in Haiti," Mehlman said. "Unless things are absolutely perfect, which they never were and they will never be, we would have to allow people to remain here indefinitely."

Haitian government officials said Wednesday they're ill-equipped to welcome back tens of thousands of people.

"Their return would be detrimental to us," said Dave Fils-Aime, a political and economic affairs specialist for Haiti's embassy in Washington.

The same benefits currently extend to citizens of a dozen other countries. It's unclear if USCIS also inquired about their criminal histories.

McCament's memo didn't address the expiration of benefits next year for nearly 355,000 immigrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, who have had "temporary protected status" for nearly 20 years. Immigrants from the other countries arrived more recently and in fewer numbers.

Trump wooed Haitian-Americans as the Republican nominee, despite wide support for Democrats in their community, which makes up 1.8 percent of Florida voters.

"The Haitian people deserve better, as I intend to give them," Trump said in Miami's Little Haiti in September. "I will be your champion."

In the USCIS emails, Larrieux hears echoes of the prejudice Haitians suffered in the 1980s when U.S. doctors wrongly identified them as a risk factor for AIDS.

"Now they're going to put a tag on us that we are criminals and we're abusing the system? This is discrimination," Larrieux said. "Does that mean that white people don't do crimes? That there's no American born in the U.S., or people with green cards, or people who get their citizenship who commit crimes? If that's their argument, they're wrong."

Associated Press writer David McFadden in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, contributed to this report.

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Haitians fear wrenching end to US immigration protection - ABC News

It turns out Jared Kushners role as senior adviser to President Donald Trump hit a snag.

White House sources confirmed to FOX Business that Kushner recused himself from working on the controversial EB-5 immigration program at the start of the administration amid potential concern that his involvement would have been perceived as a conflict of interest due to his White House role.

However, despite that recusal, his name was mentioned when his sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, used the immigration law during a sales pitch in Beijing where she urged Chinese billionaires to invest in the luxury apartment building One Journal Square in Jersey City, NJ. In return, investors would be granted a chance to live in the United States and a fast track to permanent residency. She mentioned her brother, the former chief executive officer of Kushner Companies, within her presentation, as a way, some have said, to lure investors.

EB-5, the much-criticized visa program, allows foreigners to win fast-track immigration in return for investing $500,000 in U.S. properties.

President Trump extended the program only a day before Meyers investor pitch as part of a massive federal spending bill, but theres no sign that the president did so in order to help the Kushners.

Kushner Companies insisted the mention of Trumps son-in law during the presentation was not an attempt to reel in investors and issued this mea culpa: Kushner Companies apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyer's intention, a Kushner Companies spokesperson said in a statement to FOX Business.

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Kushners personal attorney Blake Roberts of WilmerHale LLP, said in a statement to FOX Business that his client divested himself from Kushner Companies and the One Journal Square project while also acknowledging he will recuse from particular matters concerning the EB-5 visa program.

While Trumps senior adviser recused himself from being involved with the EB-5 program in January, well before his sisters China visit, it may also have something to do with another project he was working on throughout the campaign, which involved the same program hes hurrying to distance himself from.

In 2014, Kushner Companies, under the leadership of Jared Kushner, teamed up with The Trump Organization, then led by Donald Trump, and KABR Group of New Jersey to work on their first big project known as Trump Bay Street, a 50-story luxury rental apartment building in Jersey City.

The project itself was worth about $200 million but sources close to the development say Kushner Properties and KABR Group raised $50 million in funds through the EB-5 program. At the time, The Trump Organization was only involved with licensing the building, sources tell FOX Business.

The timing of Trump Bay Streets completion may also suggest why the White House was so eager to have Kushner recuse himself from working on the EB-5 program. The project was officially completed in November 2016, the same month Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States and only two months before Jared Kushner resigned from being the CEO of his familys real estate company to become Trumps most trusted adviser.

Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, agreed that Kushner should have recused himself from working on the EB-5 program. It makes total sense that he had to recuse himself because he legally could not discuss it and it just wouldnt look good for the administration if Trumps senior adviser, not to mention his son-in-law, was in on conversations about a program that his company used to invest in properties.

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Jared Kushner Steps Away From Immigration Reform Amid Questions of Conflict - Fox Business