Under Pressure from Grassroots and Congress, DOL Lightens Rule

Press Release

Today, the Department of Labor (DOL) published its final rule revising the H-2A "special procedures" guest worker visa program. Family herding operations in Wyoming rely on the special procedures to hire guest workers with the necessary expertise to bring agricultural products from the range to the market.

In typical Washington fashion, the DOL issued an unrealistic and rushed regulation that would have severely limited ranch workers' operations. U.S. Representative Cynthia Lummis supported a grassroots campaign to fight these crippling regulations by ensuring Wyoming voices were heard in the rulemaking process. As a result, the final rule reflects stakeholder input from Wyoming and across the west.

"This rule could still be much better, but it is strides ahead of where it was just a few months ago," said Rep. Lummis. "The initial draft of the rule would have buried Wyoming's family ranches under mountains of red tape and exposed them to unworkable restrictions on everyday operations. The changes we secured to the rule will make a difference for Wyoming's ranching families, whose ability to make a living and pass their heritage on to their children is at stake. Future rules need to take stakeholder input more seriously from the start instead of proposing devastating rules first and taking input later."

"While more time is needed to analyze the full affect the final rule will have on sheep producers who utilize the H-2A program, we believe the rule reflects a compromise," said Amy Hendrickson, Executive Director of the Wyoming Wool Growers Association (WWGA). "It is certainly better than we anticipated. We are grateful to the DOL for genuinely listening to the concerns expressed by the sheep industry and adjusting their final rule to address those concerns. We are grateful for the hard work and perseverance of so many who worked tirelessly on this issue, including Mountain Plains Agricultural Services and others who worked with them collaboratively, and for the strong support provided by our members of Congress in carrying forward our concerns. We would also like to acknowledge the members of the WWGA who took time from their busy schedules and made the effort to ensure that the needs and concerns of Wyoming's sheep producers were expressed."

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