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Members of Congress to streamline the H-2A program, make it faster, more dependable and remove a few somewhat outdated requirements.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.