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TN visas have become difficult to approve

A National Pork Producers Council leader says a popular worker visa program has become very difficult to use. 

Regional Director Luke Wall tells Brownfield farmers have seen an influx of delays and rejections for three-year continuous TN  (or nonimmigrant classification) visa applicants. “Just denials, very simply and without any explanation. Some of those workers in Mexico that take the time and their money to go to a consulate to get those interviews, they may have just a thirty-second meeting and it’s denied without any explanations.”

Wall says he’s been told the federal government is trying to standardize the visa process, and if the application job title, job description and location are not very clear, it’s an automatic rejection. “And if they don’t see a correlation right away, they’re not going to ask a whole lot of questions and just give a denial so I think it’s important to make sure that the job description for these workers matches the job title and then what they’re going to be doing once they come up to farms here in the United States.”

Wall says along with solving TN visa problems, NPPC also supports H-2A reform to allow that program to be used year-round.

AUDIO: Luke Wall discusses several issues important to pork producers with Brownfield’s Larry Lee.