Immigration Bills Offer Help for Immigrant Workers
By: Gerri L. Elder
Immigrants who are at the opposite ends of the job market may be helped by measures that are being shuttled through Congress by the agriculture industry, Silicon Valley and California legislators.
Senator Dianne Feinstein has attached a farm guest-worker program to the Iraq spending bill in an attempt to help the produce fields in California with a shortage of workers. Feinstein's proposal comes amid federal crackdowns on illegal immigration and a hostile political climate towards sweeping immigration measures. The senator calls the farmworker situation in California an emergency.
Feinstein's addition to the Iraq spending bill would give temporary legal status to 1.3 million farmworkers over the next five years, but would not provide any path to permanent residency or citizenship. Workers applying for the farm guest-worker program would have to provide proof that they had worked on farms in the United States for at least 150 days or 863 hours or have earned at least $17,000 over the previous four years. If approved, they would be required to work in agriculture for the next five years, at which point the farm guest-worker program expires. The measure has already passed the Senate Appropriations Committee 17-12, but Feinstein says that getting the measure passed will be an uphill struggle all the way.
Since the immigration reform bill died in the Senate last June, pro-immigration lawmakers have slowly started to let go of aspirations to provide a path to citizenship for farmworkers. Feinstein's attached bill is backed by Western Growers representing California farmers, and the United Farm Workers of America union. The president of Western Growers, Tom Nassif has said that large growers, recognizing the lack of helpful legislation thus far, are making accelerated efforts to permanently move their farming operations to Mexico.
Tightened borders have made it especially difficult for farm workers to return to the United States if they leave. Since most farmworkers in California are illegal immigrants, the lack of an effective guest-worker program is crippling the agriculture industry in the state. The existing guest-worker program, H2A is criticized by farmers as cumbersome and ineffective, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren is concentrating more on the opposite end of the labor market and is promoting several low-key bills to give permanent residence options to top engineering talent in Silicon Valley. Lofgren has abandoned her efforts to expand the H-1B program for temporary high-skilled workers. The program regularly runs out of allotted visas on the first day that they are released.
Lofgren's immigration bills include one that would allow immigrants with master's and doctorate degrees from U.S. schools to apply immediately for permanent residence and not have to try their luck with the limited H-1B program. In another proposed immigration law, Lofgren has ironically partnered with Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner to "recapture" unused permanent resident slots. Sensenbrenner was the author of immigration crackdown legislation that was so harsh that it led to the first large-scale Latino immigration protests in 2006. Sensenbrenner's legislation was never enacted.