Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2005

EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the proposal offered by Senators Craig and Kennedy. I see Senator Kennedy on the floor and Senator Craig on the floor. Their work is a testament to their persistence and the staying power of a handful of agricultural workers and employers who have been willing to set aside ideology and partisanship to hammer out a major overhaul of our law in this area.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, a remarkable coalition of agricultural employers and farm workers has come together behind the Craig-Kennedy amendment. I commend them for all of their efforts. I simply wanted to spend a few minutes and talk about a bit of lineage behind this whole effort.

To some extent, this began on the afternoon of July 23, 1998, when I had the opportunity to join with my friend and colleague Senator Gordon Smith and we offered an amendment to overhaul this program. It was, in fact, entitled the AgJOBS amendment. It had the strong support of Senator Craig at that time. We received 68 votes for that legislation. I think it was an indication then, as we see today, how the system works for no one.

To a great extent, we see so many who feel we have lost control of our borders. The system surely does not work for the honest agricultural employer, and the vast majority certainly meet that test, and for many farm workers who work hard and contribute every single day. The system simply does not work for anyone. So what Senator Smith and I tried to do that July day in 1998 was to begin to address the foundation of a sensible immigration policy based on the proposition that what we have been doing does not work for anybody. It does not work for our country.

We live under a contradiction every day with respect to immigration. We say we are against illegal immigration. One can hear that in every coffee shop in the United States. Then we look the other way so as to deal with agriculture or perhaps motels, hotels, restaurants, and a variety of other establishments. We have to resolve that contradiction. We ought to resolve it by making the kind of start the Craig-Kennedy legislation does by saying we are going to put our focus on legal workers who are here in compliance with the law. That is what we sought to do that July day in 1998, requiring the growers to hire U.S. farmworkers first before they could seek alien workers. Then we took steps to try to ensure a measure of justice that would be required in our legislation for the migrant farmworkers by providing employment, housing, transportation, and other benefits, access to Head Start. I think Senator Kennedy remembers this well from 1998. One would have thought Western civilization was going to end when that amendment offered by Oregon's two Senators got 68 votes in the Senate. I think it was an indication of how the animosity and fear that has surrounded this issue has enveloped the whole debate over the last few years, and that is why I commend Senator Craig and Senator Kennedy for the thoughtful way they have worked since 1998 in order to build a coalition for this idea and to refine what the Senate voted for in 1998.

For example, in 1999, the National Council of Agricultural Employers, the employer group that helped start the process that led to the first AgJOBS bill of 1998, started reaching out directly to the Hispanic community representing agricultural workers, as well as churches and community groups. A dialog was begun then about how reform could benefit everyone.

In 2000, people from the agricultural employer community and those representing the farmworkers started talking more publicly about some of the issues that were particularly contentious. All of a sudden, there was an extended and thoughtful debate among people who were avowed enemies with respect to the topic of H-2A reform. Those people who had fought each other so bitterly began to come together and form a coalition that is behind the Craig-Kennedy amendment today.

In 1996, I formulated certain beliefs with respect to this issue that still hold true today. First, I believe willing and able American workers always should be given a chance to fulfill the needs of employers seeking agricultural labor. This was addressed in 1998 and it remains in the language before the Senate today. The amendment offered by Senator Craig and Senator Kennedy requires employers seeking to use the H-2A program to first offer the job to any eligible U.S. worker who applies and who is equally or better qualified for the job, and then issue notice to local and State employment agencies, farmworkers organizations, and also through advertising.

We also said back then we wanted to have recommendations for a more straightforward, less cumbersome, less unwieldy process to address the shortage of primary foreign workers.

I commend Senator Craig and Senator Kennedy because what we had been concerned about then--the need for simplicity and certainty--is now embodied in a number of aspects in this amendment. Employers are required to provide actual employment to the worker, a living wage and proof of that employment so the worker can move freely between jobs. The employee is required to show proof of legal temporary worker status in the United States to the employer before becoming employed. Each party shoulders the burden of ensuring their documentation is legal. That is the way we said it ought to be in 1998. That is the way it is in the Craig-Kennedy proposal.

Third, I have always maintained and still maintain that a farmer using the H-2A program should not be able to misuse it to displace U.S. agricultural workers or make U.S. workers worse off. The language before us today meets that test by ensuring that H-2A workers must be paid the same wage as the American worker. There is no incentive to seek a guest worker because there is no opportunity to indenture that worker by paying lower wages or not providing enough work.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, we said then and it is clear in this amendment as well that any program must not encourage the illegal immigration of workers. This bill addresses that by requiring agricultural workers to show they are legally in the United States in order to collect the benefits available under this program, such as housing, transportation, and the civil right to sue their employers for back wages or for wrongful dismissal.

So the goal of this legislation is to take out some of the uncertainty and the lack of predictability that has been in this program, and that uncertainty would be removed for both growers and workers.

Certainly my State has a great interest in agriculture. There are certainly billions of dollars of direct economic output in this sector and there is a need to enact H-2A programs for my State, where we feel we do a lot of things well, but what we do best is we grow things, and the need for enacting this program is as great today as it was in 1998. Both sides in this debate are going to continue to have their differences, and my guess is, as the Senator from Idaho knows, there are probably some residual and historical grudges. This Craig-Kennedy proposal shows that in a very contentious area that has been gridlocked in the Senate since a July date in 1998, we can still find a creative process that brings people together to solve mutual problems.

I hope my colleagues will support this historic effort. I look forward to working with Senators on both sides of the aisle on this matter.

I yield the floor.

http://thomas.loc.gov/