COLLEGE CORNER, Ohio — The Partnership for a New American Economy is a bipartisan coalition of more than 500 mayors and business leaders dedicated to smart immigration reform, said Hanna Siegel, deputy director of the group, at the American Agri-Women (AAW) national convention earlier this month.

The Partnership was founded four years ago by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Fox media mogul Rupert Murdoch. They felt the conversation about immigration reform needed to focus on making it a policy objective instead of a political weapon, Siegel said. “We need a systemic overhaul,” she said. “This can’t be just for one sector or just dealing with high-skilled workers. At the Partnership, we’ve focused on working with sectors across the economy.

“Agriculture’s case for reform is one of the strongest, and the agriculture industry is one of the industries that has a huge impact on members of Congress. So, over the past year we at the Partnership have followed the lead of our partners and tried to collaborate on building that case in different ways.”

The United States is increasingly reliant on imports because of a labor shortage, Siegel said. There are all kinds of worries that go along with that, but she said it also takes jobs away from this country.

If fresh fruit and vegetable growers in the United States had been able to maintain the domestic market share they held as recently as 1998 and 2000, those communities would have seen almost $5 billion in additional farming income and 89,300 jobs in 2012 alone, said Siegel, quoting from a study done for the Partnership and for the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform.

“We worked across sectors not only with agriculture but with technology and business and with faith communities, trying to push this universal case,” she said. “This is an issue that affects all Americans in all sectors in the economy. Our goal is to make the case in every way that we possibly can.”

The Partnership supports a way for illegal immigrants to gain permanent legal status, she said. Particularly in agriculture, about 80 percent of the workforce is undocumented immigrants, by some estimates. It is just not feasible nor right to deport more than 11 million people.

“There needs to be a system set up to provide some sort of legal status or way to achieve citizenship, with paying back taxes, learning English, having a background check, going through a rigorous process,” Siegel said. “There needs to be a system set up so that there isn’t this shadow population that is, in many cases, working but unable to contribute to their communities and their local economies in a way that they could otherwise.”

This country also needs a system that deters future illegal immigration. The current system is not working and has not worked for years. That is why the illegal immigration population has grown dramatically, she said.

“We need … a system that gives the 11 million that are here now a path to legal status, which allows them to work,” Siegel said. “We need a legal immigration system that encourages smart, efficient, legal immigrants to come to the United States and fulfill their dreams.”

To read the study Siegel quoted, visit www.renewoureconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/no-longer-home-grown.pdf