With hopes for quick reform dashed, ag supports Plan B

By WES SANDER
Capital Press

Since the health care overhaul was passed in March, ag and labor interests have been pushing Congress to take up some form of immigration reform in the current session.

But all sides tend to agree that in 2010, the push will be an uphill slog, if anything.

Labor interests want reform to be comprehensive -- applying to all of the estimated 30 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

But few observers expect Congress to attack a reworking of immigration policy, one of the hottest issues on the national radar, this year. Common wisdom says political fatigue has set in, with the recent health care overhaul having rendered incumbents vulnerable in November elections.

Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, told the Capital Press in a recent interview that he doesn't expect Congress to take up the issue before 2011.

"I think it is unlikely anything will happen this year, because people don't have the stomach to go back and take on another controversial issue (after the health care debate)," he said.

But many farm and immigrant interests express an urgent need for reform, which is driving support among farmers for the AgJOBS bill as a stand-alone Plan B if Congress fails to advance comprehensive policy in the coming days.

AgJOBS -- the Agriculture Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act -- is a bill that many parties with a direct interest in the issue began negotiating in 1999 and have widely supported since its first introduction in 2003. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced AgJOBS most recently in May 2009.

The bill would allow foreign workers in the H-2A guestworker program, and many undocumented farmworkers, who meet certain requirements to earn temporary immigration status with the possibility of becoming permanent residents. The law would also revise the current H-2A program.

"They've got to do something this year," said Manuel Cunha, president of Nisei Farmers League in California, who attended the original, clandestine meeting in 1999 that sparked AgJOBS.

Farmers face an absurd reality: Though growers follow rules that require them to obtain from their employees documentation establishing their legal residency, experts say around half of the workers are using forged papers and are actually in the country illegally.

At the same time, federal officials have stepped up employer audits, increasing the chances that growers could lose seasonal workers at critical times in the growing or harvest cycle.

Non-seasonal employers are vulnerable too. Cunha decried audits in 2009 by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for disrupting the operations of dairymen, who then faced the difficulty of finding new employees with the skills their operations need.

Thus the problem will hold farmers hostage, they argue, until Congress fixes the H-2A program, which sets the process by which they can temporarily import workers. The program has proven so cumbersome that many employers don't use it, opting instead to hire from a pool of workers who show legal papers, despite the risk that they are faked.

"We have to follow the law, but the laws around immigration are broken," Cunha said.

Lobbyists, officials and politicians began raising the volume of debate on the issue late last year. In December, two members of President Barack Obama's cabinet -- Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke -- appeared in Washington, D.C., to push for reform.

On March 19, two days before Congress sent the health care bill to the president, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina outlined their coming immigration reform proposal in The Washington Post. The pair said their plan, like AgJOBS, would strengthen enforcement while erecting an earned-documentation process for those currently in the U.S. illegally.

Schumer and Graham's legislation is expected any day, but it's unknown how far it might diverge from AgJOBS, which only Schumer co-sponsors.

Obama has continued to express support for an immigration overhaul since promising as a candidate to deliver on the issue. But while the economy and health care dominated the agenda, Obama reversed employer-friendly changes that President George W. Bush had made to the federal guest-farmworker program. Those changes take effect this year, a fact that ag employers have been grumbling over.

Current conditions offer signs of encouragement. AgJOBS's 57 co-sponsors in the House include 12 Republicans. In March, the bill claimed bipartisanship in the Senate when Richard Lugar of Indiana became the first Republican of 22 co-sponsors.

The Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform counts among supporters the United States Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Counties and Americans for Tax Freedom, headed by conservative activist and labor antagonist Grover Norquist.

But AgJOBS yet lacks support from the American Farm Bureau Federation, which has declared no position. Ron Gaskill, Farm Bureau's director of Congressional relations, says Farm Bureau wants to rework provisions that protect domestic workers, set and guarantee wages and limit H-2A's provisions mostly to seasonal labor.

Gaskill says lawmakers have reacted with surprise that the organization hasn't signed on. But the Farm Bureau is simply exercising the leverage that comes with its size, Gaskill said.

"We're probably one of the few that can say this doesn't measure up for us, and we can sit on the sidelines or we can take a different approach," he said. "We're trying to make it better."

The California Farm Bureau Federation supports AgJOBS, as do its Oregon and Idaho counterparts. But Bryan Little, director of labor affairs with the California Farm Bureau, expresses acceptance of political roadblocks. He shares the hope that AgJOBS might move by itself, but says the uphill battle remains considerable.

"I don't know if we're there yet on AgJOBS," Little said. "I don't know that it can necessarily overcome all of the political problems surrounding it."

AgJOBS faces considerable public resistance.

Former President George W. Bush drew fire from his own party over a failed immigration reform attempt that similarly included a pathway for documentation. It withered before opposition, largely among Republican constituents who derided the plan's "amnesty" for illegals.

United Farm Workers is not yet ready for the AgJOBS-only position. In considering the anticipated challenges, UFW political and legislative director Giev Kashkooli points to the passage of health care reform, a successful effort that was repeatedly pronounced dead in the past year.

Kashkooli further denies the notion that looming elections should prevent lawmakers from addressing tough issues. The urgency for farmers and laborers alike, he said, can trump politics.