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There have been several
votes on AgJOBS and amendments
to AgJOBS this Congress.
2006 Debate on AgJOBS
On May 25, 2006, the U.S. Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform
bill that includes the AgJOBS farmworker immigration compromise.
Please click here for more
information about the 2006 Senate debate
on AgJOBS, including the mark-up of an immigration bill that
included AgJOBS in the Judiciary Committee and the debate on the
Senate floor that led to the defeat of efforts by Sen. Saxby
Chambliss (R.-Ga.) and others to eliminate the earned legalization
program from AgJOBS and to remove major labor protections in the
H-2A guestworker program.
2005 Debate on
AgJOBS
On April 19, 2005, the Senate had an opportunity to consider AgJOBS as
an amendment to a supplemental appropriations bill for the
Iraq war, HR 1268.
Please click here for more
information about the 2005 Senate debate
on AgJOBS and the Chambliss alternative to AgJOBS, both of which
were offered as amendments to a supplemental appropriations bill.
2006 Debate on AgJOBS
The Immigration Debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee
The immigration
debate in the Senate began in earnest with the release of Senator
Arlen Specter’s (R-Penn.) draft immigration bill (called a
“Chairman’s Mark”) at the end of February. The initial mark was a
big disappointment – among other problems, Sen. Specter
failed to provide a realistic solution for undocumented workers and
ignored agriculture by failing to include the AgJOBS farmworker
immigration compromise in his draft. The bill improved greatly,
however, with the passage of several important amendments, including
AgJOBS.
Senator Feinstein
(D-Cali.), who had previously opposed AgJOBS, offered a
modified version of AgJOBS as an amendment after reaching an
agreement with the bill’s primary sponsors, Sen. Larry Craig
(R.-Idaho) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.), as well as the United
Farm Workers and representatives from the agricultural industry.
AgJOBS would address agricultural employers’ demands for a stable
labor supply by giving undocumented farmworkers the opportunity to
earn permanent legal status by performing additional work in
agriculture. A majority of the committee, including all the Senate
Judiciary Committee Democrats,
supported the AgJOBS amendment. The Committee Republicans who
voted for AgJOBS were Senators DeWine, Brownback, and Specter.
Senators Hatch and Graham “passed,” choosing not to vote on the
AgJOBS amendment. The Republican opponents were Coburn, Grassley,
Kyl, Sessions and Cornyn.
In addition to the
AgJOBS compromise, other amendments to the Judiciary Committee
immigration bill included the legalization and guestworker
provisions from the Kennedy-McCain immigration bill, the DREAM Act,
and a section eliminating a provision that would have criminalized
undocumented presence and providing a humanitarian exception to
provisions that would criminalize those providing assistance to the
undocumented. On March 27, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee
approved a compromise comprehensive immigration reform bill with 12
Senators (all of the Democrats and Senators Specter, Brownback,
DeWine and Graham) voting in support of the bill. The Judiciary
Committee reported the bill to the Senator floor, where debate on
immigration reform began the next day.
Senate Floor Debate
in March-April
Although the floor
debate began with Senator Frist’s border enforcement bill (Frist
beat the Judiciary Committee to the chase by introducing his own
immigration bill before the Judiciary Committee had a chance to
complete work on its own bill), Senator Specter subsequently offered
the Judiciary Committee immigration bill as a substitute to Frist's
bill. Both bills were the subject of debate.
Predictably, Senator
Chambliss (R-Ga.), who has a history of introducing anti-worker
immigration bills making one-sided changes to the H-2A agricultural
guestworker program, introduced a
bevy of amendments intended to undermine the AgJOBS compromise
in the Judiciary Committee bill. The Chambliss amendments were
aimed at creating a cheap, exploitable foreign labor force by
slashing wage rates and eliminating other labor protections,
such as a
preference for US workers, and would have undercut the goal of
creating a stable agricultural labor force by eliminating the
opportunity for farmworkers to earn permanent resident status. The
amendments were very similar to the proposal Chambliss offered in
April 2005, which lost by a vote of 77-21.
The Senate, however,
did not reach Senator Chambliss’s amendments or most other
amendments. Instead, the immigration debate ran into numerous
obstacles, such as difficulties agreeing how to proceed on
amendments. The Senate Judiciary Committee immigration bill was
unable to achieve sufficient support to overcome a potential
filibuster (the bill needed 60 votes in support of cloture). A
subsequent compromise bill cobbled together by Senators Martinez (R-Fla)
and Hagel (R-Neb), which included the AgJOBS compromise and had
similar but less generous legalization provisions than the Judiciary
Committee bill, won enough support that Republican and Democratic
leaders held a joint press conference on April 6 to announce a new
compromise. But that too fell victim to the procedural hurdles.
And finally, Senator Frist’s border enforcement bill also failed.
May Debate and
Passage of Senate Immigration Bill
On May 15, 2006,
after the failed attempt to pass an immigration bill in early April,
the Senate took up immigration reform again and began debating the
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, S. 2611, sponsored by
Senators Specter, Hagel, Martinez, Kennedy, McCain, and others,
which includes AgJOBS. Predictably, Senator Chambliss (R-Ga.) again
attempted to defeat the AgJOBS compromise. Senator Chambliss
submitted a
dozen amendments that would have undermined the AgJOBS
compromise by eliminating the AgJOBS earned legalization program and
removing several key labor protections from the H-2A guestworker
program. These amendments were very similar to the proposal
Chambliss offered in April 2005, which lost by a vote of 77-21. The
Senate debated and voted on two of his amendments.
The first of Sen.
Chambliss’s amendments,
SA 4009, would have
slashed wage rates in the H-2A agricultural guestworker program
by making the federal minimum wage inapplicable to H-2A agricultural
guestworkers and abolishing the historical adverse effect wage rate
(AEWR), which is a special wage protection created in response to
wage depression during the Bracero guestworker program. The
American Farm Bureau Federation lobbied heavily for this amendment;
however, many other major agribusiness employer groups continued to
support the AgJOBS compromise. On May 22, the Senate voted
50-43 against the Chambliss wage amendment by voting to “table”
(essentially kill) it.
Sen. Chambliss then
went forward on another amendment,
SA 4084, which would have
undermined the blue card program by imposing heavy fines,
unrealistic English language requirements, and overly burdensome
work requirements on farmworkers applying for the legalization
program. Again, Sen. Craig and Sen. Salazar (D.-Colo.) led the
debate successfully and AgJOBS supporters were successful in
defeating this amendment. On May 24, 2006, by a resounding vote of
62-35, the Senate voted to table the amendment. Once again,
Sen. Chambliss's attempts to destroy AgJOBS through harsh, one-sided
changes were defeated.
The next day,
May 25, 2006, the Senate passed the Comprehensive Immigration
Reform Act of 2006, S. 2611, which included AgJOBS. Now the Senate
bill must be meshed with the House immigration bill, H.R. 4437,
during a House-Senate Conference Committee. HR 4437 has served as
the impetus for many rallies recently, bringing hundreds of
thousands of immigrants and immigrant advocates to the streets to
protest HR 4437’s harsh provisions, such as criminalization of
millions of undocumented persons, including children. HR 4437 fails
to address the immigration crisis in agriculture and does not
provide a realistic solution for the undocumented, who are the
majority of the agricultural workforce.
To see letters
sent to Congress supporting AgJOBS and opposing the Chambliss
amendments, please click on the links below:
·
March 30, 2006 Letter from
the
National Farmworker Alliance
·
April 4, 2006 Letter from
Major agricultural employer groups
·
April 4, 2006 Letter from
the
National Council of La Raza,
·
Letter from
the
United Farm Workers
·
Letter from
Farmworker Justice Fund.
·
May
18, 2006
Sign-on Letter supporting AgJOBS and opposing Chambliss
amendments
·
May
24, 2006
Sign-on Letter supporting AgJOBS and opposing Chambliss
amendment to kill legalization program
____________________________________________________________________
2005 Debate on AgJOBS
April 19, 2005
Debate on AgJOBS and the Chambliss/Kyl Amendment
On
April 19, 2005, the Senate had an opportunity to consider AgJOBS as
an amendment to a supplemental appropriations bill for the Iraq war,
HR 1268.
AgJOBS was Senate amendment no. 375. Senators Saxby Chambliss
(R-Ga.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) presented an alternative bill to
AgJOBS (Sen.
Am. No. 432), a harsh guestworker program with no opportunity to
earn permanent immigration status, i.e., no program for earned
legalization. Essentially, Chambliss’ proposed amendment
streamlines the H-2A program in an employer friendly, anti-worker
way and provides for a new guestworker program, the Blue Card
Program, for year-round jobs in agriculture.
During the debate on AgJOBS, several Senators, including
Senate Republicans Craig (R.-Idaho) and Voinovich (R-Ohio), as well
as Democrats Kennedy (D-Mass.), Leahy (D-Vt.), and Wyden (D-Or.)
strongly supported AgJOBS. They pointed to AgJOBS’s benefits for
both agricultural workers and employers through the streamlining of
the H-2A program and the opportunity for undocumented workers to
earn legal status, thus bringing workers out of the shadows,
creating a stable workforce and bringing dignity to workers. In
addition, a letter signed by 509 organizations in support of AgJOBS,
representing agricultural employers, farmworkers, as well as many
others, was inserted into the record.
Speaking in
opposition to AgJOBS were Senators Byrd (D-W. Va.), Chambliss (R-Ga.),
Cornyn (R-Tex.), Inhofe (R-Okla.), Kyl (R-Ariz.), and Sessions
(R-Ala.). These Senators mischaracterized AgJOBS as a program
rewarding “illegal aliens” by giving them “amnesty.” Senator
Sessions highlighted the debate with his view that becoming a legal
permanent resident is significant “because if you become a legal
permanent resident, then you are no longer an indentured servant.”
Senator Feinstein (D.-Cal.) said that she supported the concept of
AgJOBS, but only with the inclusion of her severe and unrealistic
amendments. Her proposed amendments increased work requirements
necessary to earn legalization, barred applications for legalization
from outside the United States, and disqualified persons who
convicted of only one misdemeanor, no matter how minor.
The Senate had decided that AgJOBS and several other proposed
amendments to the supplemental appropriations bill could receive a
vote only if each of them first obtained sixty votes in support of
“cloture,” that is, to stop a potential filibuster.
By a vote of 53-45, a majority of Senators demonstrated their
support for AgJOBS by voting for cloture (55 including 2 absent
Senators who had indicated their support for AgJOBS). Although the
majority vote for cloture was insufficient to get a vote on AgJOBS,
it represented a significant victory demonstrating that the majority
of the Senate supports AgJOBS. Importantly, several senators
indicated that their opposition to cloture was based on the
circumstances surrounding the vote, that the immigration amendment
had been added onto an appropriations bill. Senators Kennedy and
Craig indicated afterward that they believe they can obtain the
additional five votes to prevent a filibuster on AgJOBS. The
alternative to AgJOBS, the Chambliss/Kyl amendment,
received only 21 votes in support of cloture and 77 votes against it
– a resounding defeat sending a clear message that harsh,
one-sided, anti-immigrant guestworker programs do not carry majority
support. The overwhelming defeat signified a recognition that
Congress must offer some undocumented workers the opportunity to
earn permanent immigration status, rather than a mere temporary work
permit.
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