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Introduction of AgJOBS-99 (S.1814)

Statements of Senators Smith, Graham, and Craig,
as printed in the Congressional Record, October 27, 1999
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By Mr. SMITH of Oregon (for himself, Mr. Graham, Mr. Craig, Mr. Cleland, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Coverdell, Mr. Mack, Mr. Cochran, Mr. Helms, Mr. Grams, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Bunning, and Mr. Voinovich):

S. 1814. A bill to establish a system of registries of temporary agricultural workers to provide for a sufficient supply of such workers and to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to streamline procedures for the admission and extension of stay of nonimmigrant agricultural workers, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits And Security Act of 1999 (AgJOBS)

Mr. SMITH of Oregon. Mr. President, I rise today with Senators Graham, Craig, Cleland, McConnell, Coverdell, Mack, Cochran, Helms, Grams, Crapo, Bunning, and Voinovich to introduce the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits and Security Act of 1999.

Our bill will reform the agricultural labor market, establish and maintain immigration control, provide a legal workforce for our farmers, and restore the dignity to the lives of thousands of farmworkers who have helped make the U.S. economy the powerhouse that it is today. Indeed, these people, the farmers and farm workers, are much of the reason you and I are able to go home to a table full of food.

In all of my legislative career--7 years now--I have never found an issue that as quickly moves off the merits and on to name-calling than the issue of immigration. I was amazed and astounded at the things that were said to me and my colleague from Oregon,

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Senator Wyden, as we pursued this issue with the very best of motives last year. Those things are said still. But I challenge anyone who wants to see a better life, I challenge them to defend the current system we have in this country for agricultural workers and farmers. We take for granted when we go to the grocery store all the abundance that there greets us, but we seldom take the time to think of those who helped produce it and bring it to the market.

There is a shameful story to be told in this country when it comes to agricultural workers. What I am offering with all of my colleagues--my bipartisan colleagues--is a good-faith effort to make a bad situation much better and to get this country off an illegal system and on to a legal system so farmers no longer need be felons and farm workers no longer need to live in our shadows as fugitives.

A few years ago, the GAO issued a report. They said there is no worker shortage in agriculture. They said there is no worker shortage because we have all these illegal aliens here. As a consequence of depending on an illegal system, these people who come--many from south of the border--are subject to the most inhumane treatment by coyotes in human form. These are people who prey upon their fears. These are organizations--even some who profess to be advocates--that hold them up for money, subject them to physical abuse and even rape, and do so in the name of providing labor. They are in business as long as we keep this shameful system illegal.

How many people are we talking about? By some estimates, there are 1.6 million illegal workers in agriculture in this country. These are the people who are so often victimized. They will always be victimized as long as we keep them illegal.

Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I have tried to devise a way to help workers and farmers in three distinctive ways in the bills we have introduced today. First, we provide an opportunity for an adjustment of status so when this bill becomes the law, any worker who can demonstrate he or she has been in this country working in agriculture for some period of time in the previous year can apply for an adjusted status which will give them immediate legal rights and put them on the course over the next 5 to 7 years to work in agriculture and earn permanent legal status, a green card. Their change of status from illegal to legal actually occurs immediately.

It was my experience as a person in business that those who got amnesty immediately got a voice. As soon as they had a legal right to be here, their conditions began to improve. The people who will argue against this bill somehow benefit--even profit--by keeping these people illegal and by being their voice. I don't think that serves their interests based on what I saw in the private sector in the middle 1980s.

What we are proposing is not amnesty. Some have said this is indentured servitude. The indentured servitude is the status quo. The indentured servitude are those who simply say keep them illegal, keep them down, make sure they don't have the benefits that other workers in America do, and we will somehow suggest we are on their side. The way out of indentured servitude is to give them a legal path to follow. That is what Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are doing.

The second part of our bill is to actually reform the H-2A program. To demonstrate that, I have an application I filled out to become a Senator. It is two pages. I filled it out fairly quickly and persuaded 51-plus percent of the people in Oregon to elect me to the Senate.

If I am a farmer and I need help, this is the manual that explains how to fill out the application for one worker: It is hundreds of pages long. The manual is unnumbered and covers a multitude of agencies in the Federal Government, all of which have to sign off on every single foreign migrant worker. I am simply saying this program, H-2A, as we have it now, is a manifest failure. It is a manifest failure because very few people utilize it. All of the benefits promised by the current H-2A program go unfulfilled because everyone evades the law because the law doesn't work.

What Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are proposing to do is to create a national registry that does not even kick in until all domestic workers have right of first refusal. What it does is connect workplaces and employers with employees who want to work on farms. It will provide an opportunity even for organized labor to go to one place, find out who wants to be there, who wants the job, and even assist them in organizing if they choose to do so.

I am not here to oppose organized labor. I am trying to help them, to say there is a legal way to do this that will better serve the interests of real people, and not the imaginary, hoped-for things that some are claiming are possible, which are not possible.

Third, Senator Graham, Senator Craig and I are providing enhanced worker protections. Specifically, in this program, workers will get no less than the minimum wage, the prevailing wage, or the adverse effect wage rate which is 5 percent above the prevailing rate. This is our attempt to say that these people are due the basics of what American citizens have. In addition to that, they will have transportation benefits, housing benefits, and they will now be covered under the Migrant Seasonal Agricultural Protection Act in ways they were not before.

All of this is done because we are here to help. We reach out to all who are in this disadvantaged situation who want to be legal, who want a future, who want to pursue the American dream, and who want to do farm work.

Some have suggested we are trying to flood this country with more illegal problems. I say on the floor of the Senate, I don't want one additional worker, but I want those who are here to have a legal way to be here. This isn't as if they are coming; they are already here. It is a shameful situation when we can do nothing for them under law.

As this bill goes forward, lots of name-calling will go on, lots of mischaracterizations will be made. However, I ask my colleagues, I ask anyone interested in this issue, to read the bill this time and then tell the truth about it. Do not make it up because we have a problem. It is a human problem. It affects farm workers and farmers and we owe them something better than they have under U.S. law today.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

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Click for text of the bill as printed.

In my opinion, those voices who you anticipate will decry the proposals we are making have to carry the burden of defending the status quo. In my opinion, that is an impossible defense. What has the status quo led to in this country? It has led to over 600,000 people who pick the fruits and vegetables upon which American families depend, upon which much of our agricultural economy is relying--600,000-plus of those persons ranging between a third and a half of all of the migrant workers in the country are illegal. They are here without documents. They are here without any legal status. Can we call the current system a humane system when it puts 600,000 people in the shadows of our society because they are without legal status or legal protection? I think not.

It is also a system which denies benefits, ironically, to U.S. citizens and U.S. legal permanent residents who work as migrants in American agriculture, which we make available to non-U.S. citizens who come here under a temporary work visa that we call a H-2A visa. For instance, we provide transportation assistance to foreign visa workers that we do not provide to U.S. citizens. We provide housing benefits to foreign workers that we do not provide to U.S. citizens. We provide even a higher wage rate, a higher base salary to foreign visa workers than we do to U.S. citizens who work as migrant workers in American agriculture.

We also have a system which is--to say antiquated is to give it a status that is beyond justification. We are using a system that is bureaucratic, that does not apply contemporary methods of technology, communication, which, while it approves some 90 percent of the petitions that are filed to make it possible for those non-U.S.

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visa workers to come into the United States, oftentimes the delay in getting that ultimate approval is so extended that by the time the approval arrives the crops have already rotted in the field.

Anyone who wishes to attack our ideas, I think, has the burden of either attempting to defend a clearly--not broken but smashed status quo, and then to come forward with their own ideas. A few days ago, Senator Wyden and the Presiding Officer and myself offered an amendment to a Department of Labor appropriations bill in which we directed that the administration should come forward with its ideas as to how to correct the broken status quo of migrant farm labor in America. We look forward to receiving that response. We have been asking for that response for the better part of 2 to 3 years.

I hope now that we are on the verge of introducing legislation, we will see an engagement by all the parties who have professed an interest in this issue so we can get their ideas. We do not believe, as thoughtful as we hope this legislation will be seen, that it came down from the mountain on plates of stone. It is the product of our best human effort and we invite others who have their ideas to participate in this process. But I believe we can all start from the fundamental position that the status quo is inhumane, illegal, and unacceptable to the United States of America as a great nation entering the 21st century.

The legislation we are introducing--and we are actually introducing two pieces of legislation--the first is the Agricultural Job Opportunity Benefits and Security Act of 1999, which we intend to acronym into AG-JOBS, which is the comprehensive bill which includes all the elements the Presiding Officer outlined in his introductory remarks. We will then introduce a second bill which will be called the Farm Worker Adjustment Act of 1999, which will include only those provisions that relate to the adjustment of status by the some 600,000 undocumented aliens who are currently in the United States.

We invite our colleagues to consider both of these pieces of legislation. We hope they would be inclined to cosponsor both of these pieces of legislation.

What would be the consequence of passage of the legislation that we introduce this evening? What would be the consequences, first, for farm workers? Farm workers would receive better wages. Instead of having as the base the minimum wage, the base, as the Presiding Officer indicated, would be the greater of the minimum wage or the adverse wage rate plus 5 percent. In my State of Florida, the current calculation of the adverse wage rate plus 5 percent would be approximately $7.45, as compared to the current minimum wage of $5.15.

Second, domestic farm workers, U.S. citizens, and permanent residents, as well as those who would have the temporary work permits under the adjustment of status legislation, would all be entitled to housing, either housing onsite or, if it were determined by the Governor of the State there was adequate housing in the vicinity of the agricultural work site, it could be a housing allowance, a voucher which would allow the farm worker to select their own places to live.

It would also provide for the first time for domestic workers, citizens, permanent residents, and temporary work permit holders, access to a transportation allowance. If they had to go more than 100 miles to get from one job to the next, they would be entitled to compensation for their transportation. They would also receive the benefits of some modern technology. Just as we currently have a worker registry system for much of nonagricultural employment in America, this would provide a computer registry for agricultural workers where they can indicate: I am prepared to work in the following crops. I am prepared to work in the following locations and during the following time periods of the year. They would be permanently registered, so when a farmer was looking for workers who met those criteria, he would find this employee's name and a means by which to access that potential worker.

We would increase worker protection. Farm workers would now be covered by the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. We would not have this shadow workforce of 600,000 people without legal protection.

There would be stricter penalties for employers who failed to follow the law. Employers could be barred from the H-2A program, including a permanent bar for violations of the rights of workers.

The legal status would be available to all of the persons. They would either be working as a citizen, a permanent resident, a holder of a temporary work permit, or an H-2A visa. But our goal would be to create a situation, both legally and economically, in which all of the persons picking the fruits and vegetables in America's fields would be legal.

How would the farmers benefit? The farmers would have access to this efficient, modern, streamlined register as a means of determining who is available to do the work that I need.

They would have assurance that all of their workers were legal. We have had situations in the last few months in which there were raids on fields--Vidalia onion fields in Georgia, fruit fields in the Pacific Northwest where persons who could not show they had documents--and many could not--were arrested, where the farmer was put into a situation that his livelihood, his crop for the year was about to be lost because he would not have the people necessary to harvest the food.

We would also provide to the farmer the assurance that there would be a streamlined means by which, if necessary, they could access non-U.S. workers to assure they had a full complement of workers to carry out the task.

Mr. President, you have stated with force and eloquence the rationale for this legislation and what we hope to accomplish. I hope in the vein within which you entered this to ask our colleagues to carefully consider this legislation, particularly in the context of the unacceptable status quo. We look forward to engaging with their ideas and the ideas of others who have an interest in this issue so that this session of Congress will have as one of its achievements the closure of a chapter of inhumane abuse of hundreds of thousands of people and a denial to American agriculture of what it wants--a legal, humanely treated agricultural workforce to pick the fruits and vegetables upon which our Nation depends.

I join with you and our colleagues as we start this effort this evening and will shortly be sending to the desk the legislation on the adjustment of status of agricultural workers.

I thank the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I have had the privilege of listening tonight to both you and the Senator from Florida discuss the introduction of what we call ag jobs. I must tell you that I am pleased to join with you as a shaper and an original cosponsor of this legislation because both you and Senator Graham have so clearly outlined a fundamental human problem in our country that the Department of Labor refuses to look at with any creative form of resolution and for which America's agricultural base pleads for a resolution.

In the mid-1960s, I had the great privilege of serving as a national officer of the Future Farmers of America. During that year, I traveled the length and the breadth of America in behalf of American agriculture. From the beautiful green pea fields of eastern Oregon to the San Joaquin Valley of California where cotton was in abundance to the orange groves of Florida just at the time they were blooming, the one thing that was constantly present was a migrant farm labor force, working with those in production agriculture to pollinate, to weed, to thin, and, most important, to harvest the abundance of American agriculture.

During that year when I was traveling, I often gave speeches that said the American farmer produces enough for himself or herself and 55 other Americans. We, as Americans, were tremendously proud of that statistic.

Today, if I were making the same trip, I would say that the American farmer produces enough for himself or herself and 155 Americans and another 100 foreign mouths. Oh, we are so tremendously proud of America's productive capability. One of the reasons we are proud is not only are we unique in what we do, but we are tremendously efficient in how we do it.

We have always been labor intensive. It is the character of the industry, and

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we have chosen that labor from where it was available. We have paid them good wages, but we must have them and we need them for the American consumer, for the abundance of the market shelf, and for the productivity of production agriculture. It is all a part of a total picture.

Starting several decades ago, we began to run into problems. We did not have a Department of Labor that would work collectively and productively with American agriculture to deal with a very significant part of the equation that I have just outlined, and that was the labor side. We have a H-2A program, and Senator Graham has already outlined it. We recognize about 34,000 people are registered in that program on an annual basis and those are the ``foreign guest workers.'' Yet we have nearly 600,000 foreign illegal aliens in the agricultural job market.

What is wrong here? What is wrong is a phenomenally complicated process and, Mr. President, you held the book up tonight--thousands of pages of procedure, controls, regulations, and phenomenal forms for oftentimes illiterate people to fill out to identify with the job market that is clearly in this country. They fall victim to a term we call ``the coyote,'' that exploiter of human beings, the one who takes the opportunity to say: Ah, but for $1,000, I can get you across the border and into the farm fields of eastern Oregon or southwestern Idaho; pay me the money and I will find you the job.

Weeks later, they are oftentimes rounded up by the Immigration Service and whisked back across the border, and they are treated as less than human. Oftentimes, they are crammed into vehicles like sardines in a can. We hear the story almost every year about the vehicle that overturns and splits and spills open, and oftentimes these innocent people are killed.

That is one side of the story we are trying to solve, and I say to the Department of Labor: Why can't you work with us to solve this problem? Why can't we develop a national registry of domestic workers and from that point move to a system that allows workers into our country as foreign guest workers under an H-2A program and a system that recognizes those who are already here, 600,000-plus?

That is what we offer tonight in ag jobs. We think it is tremendously straightforward and it is honest. Yes, there will be opposition, to which the Senator from Oregon who is presiding at this moment, has spoken. I say to those who oppose, they oppose for all of the wrong reasons. They ought to sit down with us to see where we can work out our differences.

I have spoken to the human side of the equation, but I talk tonight about the whole picture of agriculture. There is the other side. There is the agricultural producer who should be allowed to have access to a stable, reliable, and available workforce.

The Department of Labor says today: If you need a job, advertise for it. So the onion farmer in southwestern Idaho advertises in Wisconsin, or New York, or Florida that he has a 2- or 3-week field job? I doubt it. It does not happen; it will not happen. But that is basically what the law of the day requires, and that is why there are 600,000-plus illegal aliens in our country because the current law isn't working, it is denying the farmer his or her reliable workforce, and it is literally opening the doors of our borders and saying: Come in, illegals. The jobs are here for you.

As a sovereign nation, that is something we should not tolerate; and that is our inability and our unwillingness to control a border environment. And we do that if we have a reasonable and easily accessible system so foreign guest workers can find their way into it and find the jobs they seek. That is what our bill offers to that workforce.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has just come out with an interesting figure that says, in the next 15 years, at today's current economic growth rates, there will be a deficit of at least 20 percent in our workforce. If we take all of the humans in America, all of the willing and available workers, all of those capable of working, and find them jobs, in this economy, there will still be a deficit of 20 percent.

What does that say? That if we are to maintain our productivity and our growth rates in this country, and our economic level of opportunity, that we have to find a legal, responsible, and easily accessible way of allowing foreign guest workers into our country to work at the jobs that will be there; and then for them to be able to return to their homes, having had a positive experience in this country and having allowed our country to grow and to prosper, as it should. That is what our legislation is about, only it is for agriculture specifically.

So we hope our colleagues will look at this legislation and join with us in it. As we move into next year's session, we will, obviously, be holding the necessary and appropriate hearings on it to address what is a very real problem in my State, in Oregon, in Florida, in every other agricultural State in the Nation, and that includes nearly all of the lower 48, and certainly even the State of Hawaii.

So I hope that is the story that comes from the introduction of our legislation tonight. It is one that I think is critically important for us.