The NJBIA and the NJ Business Immigration Coalition are joining forces to form the “Garden State Immigration Policy Institute.” Together, these entities are hosting a program in discussion of the event’s title, “The Urgent Need for Temporary Foreign Workers in New Jersey’s Economy,” on Thursday, December 1, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
According to NJBIA’s website, the event will feature “distinguished national experts” and a panel of state industry representatives, many of whom will address questions such as if there are enough temporary visas being issued, what steps can be taken to make the application process more efficient, and what are the limits of current programs such as H-2A (for temporary agricultural workers) and H-2B (for temporary non-agricultural workers).
Another area of focus for NJBIA is to explain the “selling points” behind the “Farm Workforce Modernization Act,” a bill described by nonprofit organization Farmworker Justice as “bipartisan immigration legislation that would provide undocumented farmworkers and their family members with a path to legal immigration status and citizenship, revise the H-2A agricultural guestworker program to address some employer and worker concerns, and impose mandatory employment verification (“E-verify”) in agriculture.”
After passing in the House in March of 2021, FWMA is now under review in the Senate, with its passage able to significantly reform the immigration system and, as hoped by Farmworker Justice, “result in a more stable farm labor force, and greater food safety and security to the benefit of employers, workers, and consumers.”
Registration for the free webinar is available online at NJBIA’s website, njbia.org. According to the event page, both featured speakers, David J. Bier and Theresa Cardinal Brown, are representatives from think tanks based in Washington, D.C.
Bier, the associate director of immigration studies for the Cato Institute, is referred to in his biography as being “an expert on legal immigration, border security, and interior enforcement.” Prior to coming to Cato, Bier was a senior policy adviser for Congressman Raúl Labrador, an immigration attorney-turned Republican politician and former U.S. representative who has since become the Attorney General-elect of Idaho.
Under the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, which Labrador also served on, Bier testified in the “Why Don’t They Just Get in Line? Barriers to Legal Immigration” hearing back when he was an immigration research fellow for Cato in April 2021.
Brown is the managing director of immigration and cross-border policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center, as well as the president and founder of her own firm, Cardinal North Strategies, LLC. She graduated from the University of Delaware with a degree in international relations and economics.
Prior to her current positions, Brown was the director of immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a policy advisor for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. She also held several roles in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including being the director of both the Immigration Legislation Task Force and of Canadian Affairs, as well as attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa.
