CARLISLE SENTINEL (Pennsylvania)

January 9, 2008

Specter tells Farm Show crowd U.S. needs guest-worker program

By Alex Roarty, Sentinel Reporter

The United States needs to create a guest worker program as part of its immigration reform or risk crippling the nation’s farms, Sen. Arlen Specter said Tuesday.

Speaking within earshot of the carriage races at the Pennsylvania Farm Show, Specter, R-Pa., said securing the country’s borders is immigration reform’s No. 1 priority.

“But no matter how high you build the fences, if you have the magnet, people are going to come,” he said.

Specter was responding to a farmer and landscaper in the crowd of the town hall style meeting, both of whom said their businesses would be devastated without the aid of guest workers.

Eliminating the possibility of amnesty for illegal aliens, however, would help move the debate forward, he said.

Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff preceded Specter’s short speech and question-and-answer session by thanking the Senator for his work on 2007’s farm bill.

As it is now, Pennsylvania farms would receive more help from the federal government in this bill than in the last five, Wolff said.

The bill still needs to be passed by a House and Senate conference committee and be signed into law by President George W. Bush.

Specter, who sits on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, said he expects that will happen by March.

Family farms are threatened in Pennsylvania and across the nation, the senator said.

“This is the number one industry in the state, and we have to take care of the farmer,” he said.