Immigration/Labor Rights
White House Distorts Agriculture Relief Act
Written by barb howe Thursday, 05 June 2008 09:20
Last month, responding to the labor crisis in agriculture, Senators Feinstein and Craig attached an emergency piece of legislation to the Iraq war supplemental spending bill. The Emergency Agriculture Relief Act was eventually removed from the bill but is still desperately needed.
The Relief Act would do two things: 1.) reform the H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program (these reforms would supersede the Bush Administration’s pending plans to make anti-worker changes to the H-2A program regulations) and 2.) regularize the status of many farmworkers by providing a temporary resident status to qualified, law-abiding undocumented farmworkers as long as they continue to work in agriculture. Spouses and minor children also would receive a temporary status.
During the debate over the spending bill, the White House issued a statement criticizing the emergency legislation but was so misinformed of the content of the amendment it appears they never actually read it. The statement claimed the Relief Act “would grant illegal agricultural workers lawful status for up to five years, with the opportunity to seek lawful permanent residence during that period, as long as they have done some farm work somewhere in the world in the last two years”. The Relief Act specifically does NOT grant workers permanent residence status –it is intentionally a “temporary fix” intended to resolve the very real labor crisis on our nation’s farms due to the absence of substantive immigration reform. It also does not simply permit anyone who has ever “done some farm work somewhere in the world in the last two years” to qualify for the program but specifically limits qualifications to workers already here in the US who can prove they have been employed doing farm work in the United States. These workers would be required to continue working in agriculture for the next five years in order to obtain the temporary visa [with no path to permanent citizenship]
Such thoughtless gut-reactions are irresponsible and do nothing to help resolve the immigration labor crisis. Spreading misinformation does not help facilitate a solution and does a disservice to our nation’s farmers, farmworkers and all those who depend on US agriculture to put food on our tables.
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