Maine is Limiting H-2A Workers in Logging Sector
Jose Nino
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Maine’s Attorney General Democratic Aaron Frey is upholding a new state law that bans logging companies from hiring foreign truckers. According to a report by A.W. Morgan of VDARE, the law also prohibits foreign truckers from transporting logging companies’ products.
This law specifically singles out the use of H-2A visas to hire temporary agricultural workers.
The law in question, An Act Regarding the Transportation of Products in the Forest Products Industry, became law on June 19, 2021. It did not receive Democratic Governor Janet Mills’ signature.
Morgan highlighted some of the key provisions of this law:
Prohibition; landowner. A landowner may not hire, or contract with a person to hire, a motor carrier to transport forest products that are harvested from the landowner‘s land from a location in the State to another location in the State unless the motor carrier is operated by a resident of the United States. …
Prohibition; motor carrier. A motor carrier may not transport forest products that are harvested from a landowner‘s land from a location in the State to another location in the State unless the motor carrier is operated by a resident of the United States.
Loggers who violated the law for a third time face a $25,000 fine.
The logging industry filed a lawsuit to stop the enforcement of the law. U.S District Judge John Woodcock enjoined the law back in February. In his ruling, Woodcock declared that state laws cannot trump federal laws.
Frey, a Democrat, appealed the ruling to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
“States rarely, if ever, take such steps,” David North of the Center for Immigration Studies commented about Maine’s law.
Morgan observed that the “foreign truck drivers are Canadians covered by the H-2A program for unskilled ag[ricultural] workers.”
Such a move is surprising for a blue state like Maine. However, Maine has taken somewhat of a populist turn when it elected Republican Paul LePage (2011-2019) for governor. Moreover, Hillary Clinton barely won (48% to 45%) Maine during her failed presidential run in 2016.
Democrats in Maine realize the importance of keeping the white working class, which has largely been drifting to the Republican fold in recent years, happy. One of the ways to do that is by passing immigration restriction.
Nevertheless, as Morgan observed, the real migratory crisis is taking place at the southern border. The Biden regime has plans of handing out 300,000 temporary work visas to Central American and Mexican migrants
Right-wing populists must not give in to Open Borders Inc. and unapologetically support an immigration moratorium to protect American workers. It’s the least we can do to protect American workers from wage-depressing mass migration.
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