MINOT, N.D. (KMOT) – Farmers and ranchers work with their hands, but sometimes the biggest issue is not having enough.

President-elect Donald Trump will soon be taking office and bringing changes to immigration laws.

When needing an extra hand, producers seek assistance from migrant workers.

These workers go through the H-2A program, granting temporary employment for performing agricultural labor.

Ag Commissioner Doug Goehring said in 2023, North Dakota received 4,600 migrant workers, and that number is expected to grow.

“The margins are even slimmer, so now you have to produce more and you have to produce more acres because of what’s happened with family living,” said Goehring.

He said concerns in the agriculture community aren’t necessarily about immigration, but rather with the Department of Labor, with producers facing lengthy wait periods for paperwork to go through.

“I brought these issues to Sonny Perdue, the Secretary of Agriculture at that time, he actually helped streamline the process,” said Goehring.

He said the public sometimes conflates the issues of illegal immigration and of legal migrants following the correct steps to work here.

“Sometimes the public doesn’t quite understand that, so they think H-2A workers are some of the illegals that are coming across the border. They’re not,” said Goehring.

Goehring added he hopes issues with backlogs in the Labor Department will change when the new administration takes over.

Goehring also addressed the concern of migrant workers taking jobs from American citizens.

He said the processes migrants and employers go through allows plenty of opportunities for American citizens to apply and be hired.

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BISMARCK – A bill introduced Monday, Jan. 13, in the North Dakota Legislature would prevent the Game and Fish Department from using hunting and fishing license dollars or application fees for research or management related to chronic wasting disease.

Introduced by

Reps. Bill Tveit, R-Hazen,

and

Dori Hauck, R-Hebron,

HB 1236

would require that the department use license and application fees only for programs and administration not related to CWD.

“Hunting and fishing license fees and application fees … may be used only for department programs and administration unrelated to chronic wasting disease,” the bill states.

Sens.

Mark Enget, R-Powers Lake,

and

Paul Thomas, R-Velva,

are carrying the legislation in the Senate.

The bill marks the

second proposed legislation so far this session

to limit the Game and Fish Department in its efforts to manage CWD, a neurological disease that is always fatal to deer, elk and moose. On Jan. 7,

Sen. Keith Boehm, R-Mandan,

introduced

SB 2137,

a bill that would prevent the Game and Fish Department from prohibiting or restricting the use of supplemental feed on private land – a practice more commonly known as baiting – for big game hunting. A similar bill was introduced during the 2023 legislative session and overwhelmingly passed the House before being narrowly defeated in the Senate during the closing days of the session.

SB 2137 has its first committee hearing at 10:20 a.m. Friday, Jan. 17, before the Senate Agriculture and Veterans Affairs Committee. Anyone interested in

submitting testimony on the bill

can do so on the North Dakota legislative branch website at ndlegis.gov and doing a search for SB 2137 in the “Find a bill” window. A hearing for HB 1236 hadn’t been scheduled as of Tuesday morning.

BISMARCK — North Dakota legislators heard testimony on a bill that would overhaul the way guardianships and conservatorships are overseen — something the judiciary has been working toward for more than a decade.

Senate Bill 2029

would create an Office of Guardianship and Conservatorship with broad powers to oversee such matters statewide. The office would license and maintain a registry of professional guardians and conservators, set regulations and policies, oversee legal and disciplinary actions, and manage state funding for guardianship and conservatorship programs.

Those in support of the bill believe it will address the shortage of guardians and conservators facing North Dakota while enforcing greater accountability. Those in opposition to the bill are concerned it will syphon funds from existing programs.

Chief Justice Jon Jensen said the creation of the Office of Guardianship and Conservatorship was a main priority of the legislative session for the state Supreme Court during his recent

State of the Judiciary address.

According to South Central District Judge Cynthia Feland, who testified in favor of the bill, the state currently has no licensing program for professional guardians and conservators, making it difficult to monitor who is claiming to be a professional and what their qualifications are.

President of the Guardianship Association of North Dakota Margo Haut, who testified against the bill, said that guardians are already required to obtain a national certification from the Center of Guardianship Certification and must be certified by the state courts system to act as a guardian in North Dakota.

Feland said the licensing component of the bill is important because complaints against guardians and conservators are handled on a case-by-case basis in the court system. Feland said this has created instances in which a professional guardian is removed from a case for misconduct without any mechanism to investigate other cases they are handling. The proposed bill would fix this, according to the judge.

“If we now have a procedure for licensing and we can remove them, then notification goes throughout the state to all of the district courts that this person’s license has been revoked,” she said.

If a guardian’s license is revoked, Feland said the Office of Guardianship and Conservatorship would be able to find other guardians to step in and take over the cases from the de-licensed guardian.

Donna Byzewski is the program director of the corporate guardianship program for people with intellectual disabilities at Catholic Charities North Dakota. She said during her neutral testimony that she was concerned the budgets of guardianship services would be devastated by legal costs when guardians were brought before the proposed office’s review board.

Byzewski did, however, say the bill would give the court tools to protect people in the case of exploitation or neglect by a guardian and remove the offending guardian in a timely manner, something that has taken months — if not years — to accomplish previously.

Feland said the judiciary is already preparing to implement the office should the bill pass.

“I don’t wait for this stuff to pass. We’re doing it now. So as we are speaking right now, we are actually putting together the rules for the Supreme Court to create these things” Feland said. “This is a problem that’s been there for over a decade and is getting worse. So the best way, then, to resolve it is to start doing these things right away.”