Thread: More Amnesty Please...

Feinstein to push guest-worker billSenator to assure that farm legislation is a priority in today's Fresno appearance.
By Michael Doyle / Bee Washington Bureau08/23/07 01:23:48
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WASHINGTON -- Get ready for another ride on the immigration roller coaster.

Today, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein will be assuring a San Joaquin Valley audience that Congress will once more take up a big agricultural guest-worker bill. A top priority for Valley farmers, the bill soon could resurface on Capitol Hill.

"Agriculture is going to push this thing," Manuel Cunha, president of the Fresno-based Nisei Farmers League, said Wednesday.

The agricultural guest-worker package is getting its second wind two months after comprehensive immigration reform collapsed in the Senate. It still faces very steep odds. However, political optimists can sketch out a scenario for snatching success from seeming defeat.

Dubbed AgJobs, the legislation first introduced in September 2003 culminated years of negotiations among farmers and the United Farm Workers. It would offer legal residency, and eventually U.S. citizenship, to 1.5 million illegal immigrants now working in agriculture. It also would streamline an existing guest-worker program.

Step one in the plan for passage calls for farmers and their allies to emphasize anew the dangers of losing an agricultural work force.

One-third or more of U.S. farmworkers are in this country illegally, according to conventional estimates.

"You can't pick peaches or operate a canning plant if you don't have the people," Cunha said.

An active player in immigration negotiations, Cunha will be watching Feinstein's appearance today at Fresno's Sunnyside Country Club. Recently, Cunha took part in an immigration conference call with White House officials who are maneuvering in their own way.

Step two relies on the latest promise by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that he will help pass an agricultural guest-worker bill this year. With Senate floor time limited, and the legislative calendar running out, a commitment like this becomes essential.

"I am committed to doing something about AgJobs," Reid declared in late July, in response to Feinstein's questions. "I hope we can do something soon."

Revealing one potential but controversial new tactic, Reid specified he "will do everything" he can to include the agricultural guest-worker package as part of a larger farm bill. The House already has passed its version of a farm bill, without immigration provisions.

The Senate will take up the issue next.

But with billions of dollars of agricultural subsidies at stake, the farm bill has a political constituency that may be hesitant about getting bogged down in immigration.

"There are some issues that are going to require some major amending before we will be agreeable to bringing that bill up on the farm bill," Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia cautioned during debate.

If the farm bill doesn't work out as a vehicle, Reid added, he will try to bring up the 109-page agricultural guest-worker bill as a "freestanding" bill or perhaps attach it to something else.

"There is no industry in the United States that faces the crisis agriculture does right now," Feinstein declared.

Step three in the AgJobs game plan relies on employer anxiety over a new Bush administration plan for cracking down on companies that hire illegal immigrants. Two weeks ago, the White House announced plans to send out tens of thousands of so-called "no-match" letters.

These letters will notify employers that an employee's name and Social Security number don't match government records. Potentially, employers could be fined for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. More than one agricultural lobbyist believes the White House hopes that angry business leaders will now lean on Congress to change the immigration laws.

"I think that's going to increase the motivation," Cunha said.

Thirty senators currently co-sponsor the AgJobs bill, although Feinstein said she believes she has the 60 votes needed to overcome a potential filibuster. Even so, the House would then have to approve its own version of the bill, which is something that Reps. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, and George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, have urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to do.


http://www.fresnobee.com/business/story/119626.html

feinstein, costa, radonovich, and cunha are all scumbags who are making up stories to appease the democratic voting base. Whatever happened to all the people from the last amnesty? What about all their children who have flunked out of school and are now sitting in the unemployment and welfare lines.

PELOSI needs those grapes picked.

Well, get your cards and letters ready, folks because I'll be damned if I'll sit back and let them make grape pickers legal citizens after they broke into our country.

So how ethical do you think these farmers are. The poor farmer of yesteryear is no longer. These folks live quite well while our community gets screwed with taking care of the crap they call workers.

I wrote, called and emailed senator Frankenstein ummm errr i mean Feinstein during the amnesty bill crisis. She sent me back a patronizing letter basically telling me she appreciates my input, but I am too stupid to know what is right for my country. I was told not to worry, Nanny Feinstein would make sure that my little brain didn't have to work any more and she would do what ever the hell she pleased.

I believe she is so into her own little world that nothing we do or say will impact her opinion. I just wish this state didn't have so many idiots or maybe we could just vote her into obscurity.

She never read your letter, her staff deleted the e-mail as soon as it was screened.

Here is who fingstein is asking the American public to take care of:

Pot gardens destroyed

A pair of marijuana gardens were destroyed by narcotics investigators this week in the mountains of eastern Tulare County in the Sequoia National Forest.

One garden was torn out Tuesday morning in Long Canyon, near Springville. Tulare County sheriff's deputies, along with officers from the U.S. Forest Service and the state's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting team, or CAMP, hauled out 5,203 marijuana plants in what was described as a "large-scale" garden.

Deputies estimated that the plants would have yielded a crop with a street value of nearly $21 million had they reached maturity and been harvested.

No arrests have been made in that case.

The second garden, in the national forest near Black Rock and Kennedy Meadows, had been under surveillance by investigators since Sunday, before officers went in to eradicate the crop on Monday.

One man discovered driving into the area Sunday, Miguel Arredondo Meza, 35, was arrested on suspicion of driving without a license, possession of a controlled substance and marijuana cultivation.

As deputies checked the garden later Sunday, two men who ran into the mountains were arrested and booked on suspicion of conspiracy, marijuana cultivation, marijuana transportation and hauling marijuana for sale. The pair were identified as Regino Villasenor-Gomez, 28, and Leopoldo Montanez Gonzalez, 22.

Investigators found about 200 pounds of processed marijuana with an estimated street value of $800,000.

On Monday, Tulare County deputies, CAMP officers and Forest Service rangers went in to tear out nearly 12,000 marijuana plants in the garden. Detectives estimated the potential street value of the crop at nearly $48 million.

http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/120670.html

And they wonder why Fresno has a gang, crime, so-called poverty, illegal drug, failing student, pregnant teen, and social program fraud and abuse problem. Parts of our city are no more than mexican slums.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY
Nannies on a Quest for Rights

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 4, 2007; Page B03

They'll change the diapers, wash the clothes and cook the dinner. But nannies want a little respect. They don't need "Nanny Diaries" luxuries. But a contract would do. So would minimum wage, paid vacation, sick leave and overtime pay. And notice before firing.

That's the message a group of nannies in the Washington region wants working parents, companies and local governments to hear.

At CASA of Maryland, Alexandra Santacruz, left, Herminia Servat and CASA's Doris Depaz push the organizing effort. (By Carol Guzy -- The Washington Post)

"We don't mind the work -- we just want to be paid for it," said Janet Osorio, who became so fed up with the long hours and low pay working as a nanny that she now works for a cleaning company. "And the opportunity to have a life."

Yesterday, Osorio met with a handful of nannies at CASA of Maryland in Silver Spring to announce that nannies across the country are organizing. Not into unions -- federal labor law prohibits domestic workers from forming unions -- but into the National Alliance of Domestic Workers. And the first thing they want is a "Domestic Worker Bill of Rights."

Already, they have the support of three Montgomery County Council members. A similar push, but one that was tied to paying nannies a living wage, died last year. This time, the nannies want to be assured of at least minimum wage, $6.15 an hour, or $7.15 in the District. A similar "nanny bill" was passed in New York City a few years ago by another member of the alliance, which represents 200,000 nannies from 42 countries.

"They're not asking for anything extraordinary," Alexis De Simone of CASA said.

And the fact that they aren't, she said, highlights what in reality is a vast, unregulated and largely unknown nanny shadow industry in the United States. It's a world that includes workers, both legal and illegal, who have come from countries around the world, employers who both pay and do not pay taxes, and working conditions and pay scales that vary widely.

One doesn't have to venture far into the daily headlines for the evidence: Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood and Michael Huffington all had political careers derailed by hiring undocumented workers as nannies. Recently, Washington Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder was ordered by a court to pay his nanny more than $44,000 in unpaid overtime.

Nor must one go far to witness the need: Bulletin boards in parks, preschools and churches are crammed with help-wanted ads for nannies, as are the classifieds, listservs and the word-of-mouth network that matches friends of parents with friends of nannies.

Mothers have been working for decades, De Simone said -- indeed, economists say dual incomes are often necessary to maintain middle-class status -- but the work world hasn't changed. "No one wants to pay working families to pay for child care," she said. "So it falls on the backs of domestic workers."

Osorio and some of the other nannies yesterday had their own low-wage nanny horror stories to share. Speaking in Spanish, Alexandra Santacruz explained how she had worked as a nanny for members of a diplomatic family in Ecuador, then came with them to the United States. For two years, she said, she worked constantly, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, all for less than $300 a month. "They never let me leave," she said. "They said they didn't want 'bad people' to influence me."

Santacruz was "rescued" by CASA of Maryland workers, negotiated a settlement with her former employers and now runs her own licensed in-home day-care center.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which lumps nanny wages together with other child-care workers, found that of 1.3 million child-care jobs in 2004, workers were paid between $5.90 and $12.34 an hour, with a mean annual wage of about $17,000 a year.

A 2006 survey, done for the Montgomery council, of about 280 nannies in the county found that live-in nannies generally are paid $6.29 an hour and that a majority of live-out nannies received minimum wage or more. But the vast majority did not get overtime, 20 percent had paid vacations, 15 percent had paid sick days, 28 percent reported that money was deducted for Social Security taxes and fewer than 16 percent had health insurance.

The group is starting its push for a nanny bill in Montgomery, De Simone said, because of its progressive reputation. "For a lot of people, hiring a nanny is the first time that they become an employer," she said. "Even though they're well-meaning, they don't have the proper guidelines. We want to help them do the right thing."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01223.html

OOPS! The above post should have been a new thread.

What an interesing article ...is this another job Americans don't won't to do?...we now pass our children to the illegals