Thread: Ag Jobs is up next! Here's the skivy...

Senate AgJOBS Fight Expected on Farm Bill
http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/congress.html



(September 27) In July, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised to try to include the AgJOBS amnesty for illegal farmworkers in the farm bill (H.R. 2419) when the Senate takes up that measure, which is expected to occur in October.

By and large, this is the same AgJOBS amnesty proposed last year, which, if enacted, would reward an estimated 1.5 million illegal aliens with amnesty (plus their spouses and children which could push the total to three million or more).

This measure also would provide amnesty for employers who broke the law by hiring illegal aliens.

Pro-amnesty advocacy groups are telling their members that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have promised them that AgJOBS will be attached to the farm bill this fall and be signed into law.

The Federal government offers the H-2A visa which allows farmers to import unlimited numbers of foreign agricultural workers for specific short-term work. Those complaining growers mostly bypass the H-2A visa program because they would have to pay an almost acceptable wage under the program, whereas wages for illegal aliens are far less.

Occasionally, a news story about "rotting crops" mentions that H-2A workers are available, but quotes growers as saying that going through legal channels of immigration is too cumbersome.

NumbersUSA has worked with some of the most pro-farmer Members of Congress to streamline the H-2A program, make it faster, more dependable and remove a few somewhat outdated requirements. However, the farm group lobbyists have failed to support reforms and, instead, have put all their efforts into an amnesty for the illegal workers their clients already are hiring.

While NumbersUSA questions the need or the advisability of large-scale foreign agricultural worker importation, we support efforts to drive all such hiring through legal programs that are designed to minimize the negative effect on our American native and legal immigrant agricultural workers.

It is time to revamp the H-2A program – not give amnesty to illegal aliens who, as history has demonstrated, often move on to non-agricultural professions and are replaced by new illegal workers.

Hey all, one talking point I've used on this issue (and it has worked before) is the following:

1. Tell your elected officials that we already have AG visa programs in place, many of which have an UNLIMITED amount of workers farmers can bring in. However, if corporate were to actually use these programs, they are required to pay for housing and medical care for their workers.

Now you understand why corporate farms don't want to use the existing programs (hence the adjective corporate in that phrase!)

2. We don't need any new AG job programs! The corporate farms need to play by the rules and hire their workers legally, just like any other business.

3. The economy isn't going to fall, and food prices will not DRASTICALLY increase! (as they want us to believe)
Read the article from the link below and see what a fallacy this actually is.

The main point here is to let them know that we MANY, not one AG visa program already available, and it has no annual cap.
Make no mistake, the average "American family farmer" is practically non-existant. Many have been bought out by corporate farms, and corporate farms no different than ANY other corporation.

It is important to know this because I have actually argued with aides, and they have told me that there is no current AG program available.

That just shows you how ignorant some aides really are on this issue, and most likely due to their bosses not wanting them to know either.

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9357
http://www.therationalradical.com/docum ... orkers.htm

It's the cheap farm labor Hatch effect, Sippy.



Just like all the little chickees in the pen, "cheep-cheap-cheep-cheap-cheep-cheap-cheep-cheap!!! "

Here's a recent article that describes the politics of the AgJobs bill and some alternatives being proposed by Sens. Hutchison, Sessions and others:

Sept. 17, 2007, 3:55PM
Farm needs revive immigration debate
Congress set to take up issue again as labor concerns crop up
By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

• Next month: The Senate is expected to discuss a farm bill that is the likely vehicle for an agricultural worker program that would grant legal residency to 1.5 million illegal immigrant workers.

WASHINGTON — From the Rio Grande Valley's citrus groves to Washington state apple orchards, growers are warning that agriculture is in increasing distress because of labor shortages brought on in part by stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws.

Congress appears to be paying heed as the growers complain ever more loudly of fruit and vegetable crops rotting in the field, planting plans being scaled back and production moving to Mexico. So, less than three months after the Senate nixed an overhaul of U.S. immigration policy, senators are poised to jump back onto the roller coaster and confront uncomfortable and politically treacherous questions about illegal immigration and U.S. labor needs.

It remains to be seen whether the same complex factors that doomed the White House-backed comprehensive bill in June will snare the fresh efforts.

"A lot of people are scared of this issue, and I understand that," said John Gay, co-chairman of the business-backed Essential Worker Immigration Coalition.

But, he added, "The big lesson is that the issue doesn't go away. One Senate vote doesn't mean that 12 million undocumented disappeared. ... The situation is here and it keeps getting worse."

First up as the immigration debate resumes: During this week's defense authorization debate, Democrats will seek to attach a measure granting citizenship to certain illegal immigrants who came here as children and have gone on to success in college or the military.

The main attraction, though, for the agricultural industry comes in October. The Senate is expected then to take up a farm bill that is the likely vehicle for an agricultural worker program pushed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that would grant legal residency to 1.5 million illegal immigrant farm workers.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison may find herself in the thick of that debate as she and other Republicans search for a way to deal with agriculture's labor shortages without providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The Texan is working with a trio of fellow Republicans — Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Jeff Sessions of Alabama — on a guest worker program for agriculture and other industries.

Hutchison made clear the GOP plan, shaping up as the rival to Feinstein's AgJobs bill, would not offer citizenship to the temporary workers.

"The problem we had in the last bill was the controversy over amnesty," Hutchison said when asked how her legislation could avoid the fate of the proposed comprehensive immigration fix.

Sessions, who called AgJobs a "massive amnesty," is pressing for a program that would allow foreign workers to stay in the U.S. for as long as 10 months and then return home before applying to re-enter for another temporary work cycle.

The idea is unacceptable to immigrant-rights advocates and many in agriculture, which is heavily dependent on a work force estimated to be at least 70 percent illegal..

"Everyone knows (the GOP plan) is designed to kill AgJobs," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant-advocacy group. "And it will not pass."

Hutchison is making no promises. "I don't know if we are going to be successful," she said. But, she added, "Let's try taking it in smaller pieces and do what, really, Congresses in the past should have done."

Feinstein has said she has more than 60 Democratic and Republican backers for her bill — which, if correct, could provide a filibuster-proof majority. The measure, embraced by most agriculture interests, also has widespread support in the House, where it has yet to be scheduled for a vote.

But no one is rushing to claim victory just yet.

"It's a steep climb, but there is so much at stake," said Craig Regelbrugge, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, which backs the AgJobs legislation.

Potential rival bills worry Sharon Hughes, executive vice president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, which also backs AgJobs.

"We know from all of our years of trying to get reforms through for agriculture that when anything is perceived as being too partisan, it doesn't get anywhere," Hughes said.

Already, the battle lines are being drawn.

In a "critical immigration alert" to his Senate colleagues last week, Sessions estimated AgJobs actually could legalize 3.3 million immigrants, noting that the legislation would extend legal status to the 1.5 million farmworkers' spouses and children.

"We're talking a massive increase in low-skilled workers, people without language skills and far fewer high school diplomas and college credits," he said.

Regelbrugge and his allies are fighting back with facts of their own, questioning whether it's in the national interest to lessen U.S. food production and in turn lose jobs in the food processing industry as well.

"It's really time that America wakes up and recognizes that our dependence on foreign labor is exactly like our dependence on foreign oil," he said. "And we better be careful what we wish for if we cut off that supply without a backup plan."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5139911.html

Nice work, Populist. I'm working on some low worded, hight impact statements and sentences we can use to start firing shots across their bow with e-mails and faxes. . Then when the Ag Jobs (and return of the DREAM Act) is put on the schedule, we can roll out again in massive force.

That's a good idea zeezil. We should take a proactive stance NOW, to let the OBL know we are not going away and to lay the groundwork for the next battle. Low impact now, and then ramp it up at appropriate time. Faxes and phone calls to specific senators at this time would be a good idea.

And although I am instinctively skeptical of further "guest" worker programs with an unsecured border, it does seem like Senator Session's plan is the best AgJobs alternative -- one gauge of this is that the OBL hates it.

one gauge of this is that the OBL hates it.

If the OBL hates it...it must be good!

Good one Zeezil!!!

Do they really think that if they give them amnesty, they will still work for the same low wages.

Originally Posted by Equalizer

Do they really think that if they give them amnesty, they will still work for the same low wages.

The original AgJobs had provisions to pay a prevailing wage and also protection from being fired. Such protection didn't extend to American Ag workers.
They are going to get themselves some workers on this. Get used to it. Our job is to make certain no illegal invaders are rewarded under this program. The floodgate opens if that occurs. All participants must be "fresh" and under someone's control during the employment term. Someone other than the taxpayer needs to take responsibility for their care and return at program end.