A plan has been issued by US Representative Ron Kind with the intention of boosting the flagging dairy industry in Wisconsin and highlighting his views on a couple of highly controversial issues, including global trade and the immigration policy of the United States.
The plan wants to see international markets opened to dairy products from Wisconsin as well an overhaul of the immigration system in the United States, together with the streamlining of federal dairy programs and a boost for dairy research in a bid to bring more young people into the dairy farming industry. The dairy industry is a major economic pillar in the western and central regions of the state, whose 3rd Congressional District is represented by Kind.
Kind’s office says the plan has been delivered in response to a number of problems that have been troubling the industry, such as rising input costs and low milk prices. Kind, who has been in Congress for ten terms, has long supported the idea of creating a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants living in the United States, an idea supported by many Democrats, but few Republicans.
Kind’s office says that immigrants provide up to as much as 40 percent of the dairy labor in Wisconsin, though it is not clear how many of those workers are actually undocumented immigrants. Kind’s plan says that the industry would be devastated by the loss of the labor provided by immigrants.