Thread: Senator Feinstein Wants AgJOBS Bill

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Statement of Senator Dianne Feinstein On the Need to Pass Agriculture Workers Legislation



“Now that the immigration bill has gone down, I believe the next step has to be AgJOBS. And this legislation should be moved before any other immigration-related legislation.

I recognize there are other measures that deserve action.

I’m a supporter of the DREAM Act, and I believe that it should be approved so that young men and women, who came to the United States as children, can get an education or serve in the military.

And I also know that there must be an increase to the number of H1-B visas. This is critical for ensuring that the high-tech industry in the United States remains strong and competitive.

But agriculture faces a major crisis. The only way farmers and growers can harvest their crops today is with undocumented workers.

And this year the supply of labor is down. Farmers and growers may once again lose their crops. This situation must be addressed.

So I will work with Senator Craig in any way I can to move AgJOBS first.â€

But agriculture faces a major crisis. The only way farmers and growers can harvest their crops today is with undocumented workers.

The only way? Wow! It's become more than obvious who has been bought out by the corrupt Farmers Assoc.

I've faxed and emailed this article to feinstein to try and re-educate her on how we DON'T need illegal labor to work in the ag business in order to keep costs down.

Please feel free to forward this article to her as much as possible!

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9357

More info on the AgJOBS Bill

No Green Card For Undocumented Farm Workers

April 20, 2005 11:57 a.m. EST

Amanda Bellinder, All Headline News Contributor WASHINGTON, DC (AHN) -

The Senate rejected a proposal yesterday to offer legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented farmworkers, though advocates vowed to continue the fight despite what they called a temporary setback in their efforts to reform the nation's immigration laws. "We will be back," declared Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, taking satisfaction in the 53 votes the measure received. The 53 votes of 100 Senators represents a majority, though the proposal fell short 7 votes, needing a total of 60 to stay above water as an amendment to an emergency funding bill for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The proposal, sponsored by Craig and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass, would have offered legal status to the majority of the nation's undocumented farmworkers. They, estimably, account for between 50 and 75 percent of U.S. agricultural work force of approximately 2 million employees. California's Democratic senators opposed the proposal. Sen. Dianne Feinstein called the "Agjobs" bill a magnet for more illegal immigration. Sen. Barbara Boxer agreed. According to the program, workers who qualified would have been eligible for green cards provided they performed 360 days of farm work within six years of the programs establishment. Green cards, or "visas" give cardholders the right to permanently reside in the U.S. with a chance to apply for citizenship after so long. "It's still amnesty by any name you want to call it," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., had warned during the floor debate. Rosemary Jenks, whose Internet-based organization NumbersUSA mobilized their members in a phone and fax campaign against the proposal, added that some senators voted against it because they didn't want to intertwine immigration to an emergency appropriations bill for the military. "But we also argued that the potential for fraud was massive, and that the program was clearly an offer of amnesty," she said. Kennedy, along with Sen. John McCain, are planning to draft a more enterprising immigration reform bill. McCain and Kennedy want to give legal status to most of the 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the country now, 19 years after landmark amnesty legislation. Previously, the Senate rejected an alternative measure sponsored by Kyl and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. Their proposal would have offered temporary legal status, and no green card. "That vote makes clear that if we want to have immigration reform, it has to be bipartisan," said Rob Williams, a lawyer who represented farmworkers in the talks with growers that led to Agjobs.

Copyright © AHN Media Corp - All rights reserved.
Redistribution, republication. syndication, rewriting or broadcast is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AHN.

This is how this entire immigration issue got started.

Immigration Overhaul May Hit Farms
Bid for Easier Path to Citizenship for Agricultural Workers Faces Setback
By DAVID ROGERS
May 10, 2007; Page A5

WASHINGTON -- As immigration overhaul teeters in the Senate, the White House and lawmakers are back facing the issue that started the whole debate: the treatment of undocumented immigrant farm workers.

SEEDS OF REFORM

• The Issue: Farm producers and their workers want immigration legislation to provide a reliable labor supply and a path to citizenship.
• Developments: The White House is demanding an earlier farm-labor bill be changed to conform to an immigration measure being negotiated in the Senate.
• What's Next: The Senate begins debate next week, as Democrats urge President Bush to become more actively involved.More than any other interests, Western growers and the United Farm Workers were early to put aside their differences and close ranks behind legislation that promised the industry a stable labor force and field workers a chance to begin to move toward citizenship.

Dubbed AgJOBS, the bill has steadily gained bipartisan support in Congress over the past six years as a pilot program of sorts for larger immigration reform. Under AgJOBS, illegal-immigrant farm workers who have cleared criminal checks would first get blue-card visas to establish temporary residency. To move up the next step to permanent residency, a worker would have to stay in agriculture, working at least 150 work days annually for three years, or 100 work days annually for five.

But with President Bush wanting a more comprehensive approach appealing to conservatives, workers are being asked to make concessions to help AgJOBS conform with the legislation being negotiated in the Senate.

At the heart of the debate is the question of how far the government should go to accept individuals who entered the country illegally but are otherwise law-abiding workers important to the economy.

Critics argue that any forgiveness smacks of the controversial "amnesty" granted during the 1980s. AgJOBS seeks to address this complaint by confining itself to about 1.5 million workers with a proven record of agriculture employment who are willing to remain on farms over the next three to five years to qualify for permanent residency.

But the emerging Senate bill covers all workers and imposes a longer waiting period of eight years before such immigrants can qualify for green cards and permanent residency. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the former Senate Agriculture Committee chairman who comes from Georgia's cabbage patch, also wants to loosen wage protections negotiated by the union with Western growers.

At the same time, producers worry that the Senate legalization plan is so broad that farm workers will leave their fields for less arduous jobs in urban areas.


"We're not deviating from our desire to get AgJOBS," says Tom Nassif, president of the Western Growers Association, which is flying members here next week to lobby on the issue. "We have to make sure that when we get workers, they stay in agriculture. You can't apply all the rules to every industry."

The White House argues that AgJOBS must adjust to the more comprehensive, economywide package. But as tensions rise in the Senate, farm workers and producers worry about their industry-specific deal being dragged aboard a sinking ship.

The stage was set months ago when Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) pledged two weeks of Senate floor time for a full debate on immigration, beginning Monday. But despite a huge effort, the White House will miss this deadline to produce a draft bill, and is still struggling to put together its "grand bargain" with Republican and Democratic senators.

"We're working, we're working," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this week. But Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican point-man in the Senate on the issue, said he is "less sanguine about the possibility of getting this done before Memorial Day."

An impatient Mr. Reid served notice yesterday that he instead will call up last year's Senate immigration bill as the starting point for the debate. That bill badly split Republicans a year ago, with Mr. Kyl among its chief critics, saying it lacked adequate enforcement.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) urges all sides to "stay at the table" with the White House in hopes of getting an agreement. But Democrats say Mr. Bush must become more personally involved if a deal is to be salvaged.

"We need a workable system. That's the bottom line," says Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) "There are some things being proposed that will make the system impossible to work."

Mr. Kennedy is among the lead AgJOBS sponsors, as is Rep. Howard Berman (D., Calif.). Together, the two men are pivotal if any immigration legislation is to be enacted in this Congress.

The intensity of the issue for both was seen last week when they left a meeting in the Capitol with Mr. Chertoff. Mr. Berman, rushing to the airport, had jumped out of his car at a traffic light to take off his jacket. Suddenly, Mr. Kennedy's van loomed alongside. The senator got out in the midst of traffic to talk some more about the immigration issues.

On the administration side, Mr. Chertoff is adamant that farm workers, like all other undocumented workers, wait at least eight years before qualifying for permanent residency. The administration has discussed giving a leg up to farm workers to get their green cards faster after this waiting period. Industry officials worry about whether, in a new package, the rules won't be as strong in requiring farm workers to stay in agriculture during these eight years.

Equally important are federal wage rates set for the H-2A temporary farm-worker program, designed to set a pay floor for immigrant workers. These have grown so high that more farmers have turned to illegal immigrants, who are paid less. To make the H-2A system more workable, labor agreed to roll back the rates to 2003 levels, then keep them frozen for three years while a new wage system is put in place.

This rollback is worth as much as $1 an hour in states like Georgia. But Mr. Chambliss has pressed for more long-term changes to move to a more localized "prevailing wage" standard, under which some farm workers might be paid less.

"It's a good deal for my guys but it's not the best deal they can get," he says of the AgJOBS wage package. "The prevailing wage allows California to pay what's appropriate for them, us pay what's appropriate for us."

But Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers, wants AgJOBS to stand. "They didn't get everything they wanted, we didn't get everything we wanted," he says. "But we're happy with what we got, and we're going to push to keep that compromise intact."

"You have to be realistic what you ask of farm workers," he says of the larger choices between AgJOBS and the bill being negotiated by the White House. "In the end they are going to realize what we've come up with makes a lot of sense."

Write to David Rogers at david.rogers@wsj.com1

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117876355952498047.html

I tried to post the link for this bill, but it wouldn't work.

If anyone wants to read the AgJOBS Act of 2007 just type in S.237 in the Thomas Library.

But agriculture faces a major crisis. The only way farmers and growers can harvest their crops today is with undocumented workers.

But that's against the law, and I think this argument went down around 1865?

Mechanize harvesting now! There are plenty of research efforts underway in universities' mechanical engineering departments all across the good ol USA. Please see thread: "Hooray! Robotic Fruit Pickers are Coming!

Mechanizing has been fought off in the past by groups like United Farmworkers and funding for this type of technology has dropped way down since the 1970's. Now we know why. If mechanization is already being done very cheaply ( I was surprised to see the simple raspberry harvester) the future will be the same too.

Defeating AgJOBS cheap labor bill and the "Dream Act" should be priorities. Hope we can get enough grass roots intensity to go after these.

Originally Posted by sippy

But agriculture faces a major crisis. The only way farmers and growers can harvest their crops today is with undocumented workers.

The only way? Wow! It's become more than obvious who has been bought out by the corrupt Farmers Assoc.

I've faxed and emailed this article to feinstein to try and re-educate her on how we DON'T need illegal labor to work in the ag business in order to keep costs down.

Please feel free to forward this article to her as much as possible!

http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9357

Thanks for the link sippy, I did the same and sent it to all Senators in my phone book, also told them the familys of ag workers do not need to come here and they do not need to receive path to citizenship for picking fruits and veggies and given then given the oportunity to move into other jobs such as construction.

The good people of Idaho need to go after Craig the way the good people of South Carolina are going after Graham.