Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. HUIZENGA. Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of my amendment to protect farmers, the agricultural business, and small businesses throughout west Michigan, and, frankly, across America from a costly new fee.
Along with a host of additional fee increases for H-2A and H-2B visas, the Biden administration has proposed a brand-new $600 per- petition fee, Mr. Chair, on employers seeking visas for temporary workers.
This impacts a wide range of guest worker categories, such as H-2A and H-2B. H-2As, of course, are used for temporary agricultural work, and H-2Bs are usually used in the tourism industry. Frankly, I know my friend from Texas has been very involved in the H-2B and H-2A space. We have had this discussion before.
Furthermore, the administration--not me, not Republicans--but the Biden administration itself is dubbing this increase the ``asylum program fee.'' This $600 fee will be coming directly out of the pockets of farmers and small businesses and funneled to the asylum process backlog caused by this administration's failed border policies.
In April of this year, six Republicans and six Democrats from Michigan--nearly our entire delegation--joined together to oppose this increase in a bipartisan letter to Secretary Mayorkas requesting that he reconsider reimplementing this fee and other significant fee increases that we view as harmful.
Making ends meet in the face of soaring prices and record inflation is hard enough. The Federal Government should not be inventing additional costs that raise prices for consumers and make it harder for family farms and small businesses to keep their doors open.
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Mr. HUIZENGA. Mr. Chair, I wish the gentleman hadn't necessarily yielded back his time because I would have loved to have a little bit of a colloquy on this.
I fully understand the USCIS is a fee-based institution. It takes in those fees.
In addition to the $600 per petition fee, they also had proposed a tripling of a fee for the named employee. If you are putting in--and the gentleman knows this issue very well. If you have a particular person that you are requesting to come into the country, this administration tripled that fee. If you have an unnamed person for an H-2A or an H-2B, they doubled that fee increase.
I had an amendment that was going to attempt to address those two issues, as well. The Rules Committee ruled that nongermane. We can have that discussion outside of that, but they did rule this particular proposal and this amendment as germane, as relevant to this discussion.
While we have seen a fee already that is in place be increased, we are not able to do that, but this is a brand-new fee that the administration, again, has labeled the ``asylum program fee.''
We all know that there are serious issues at the southern border, and it is something the gentleman has talked about pretty extensively. I just don't see how penalizing small businesses and people who are using the system legally and increasing their costs which are going to be passed along to the general public, how that makes sense in this case.
I talked to a farmer back in southwest Michigan who regularly employs about 100 seasonal temporary workers. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out 100 H-2A visas with a $600 fee, that is $60,000 in additional fees that this farmer is going to have to put up front before they have done the harvest, before they have actually reaped any of the benefit of the work.
That is why I believe this is so crucially important to U.S. agriculture.
While I understand the gentleman may oppose this particular amendment as it is sitting, I hope he wouldn't oppose the spirit of this. I would love to work with him on this because I do believe we need to address this issue.
Mr. Chair, I again urge all of my colleagues to vote for this amendment. I believe it is a commonsense amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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