New Ag-Jobs bill hits Congress

As High Country News noted last Fall in a story called Field Day, these days it's hard for growers to find enough agricultural workers to tend and pick their crops. With tougher enforcement on the Mexican border, stiffer penalties for hiring undocumented immigrants, and a cumbersome H-2A guest worker program, many growers are in a pinch.

In Colorado and other Western states, prison laborers have been filling in for immigrant farm workers in the orchards and vineyards.

Now Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) have introduced the Agricultural Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act in both houses of Congress. The bill would mandate a program to legalize immigrant farm workers who have worked in the U.S. for two years. It would also streamline the H-2A guest worker program. 

Similar legislation died in Congress two years ago, as have a string of immigration reform measures. The current bill has bipartisan support in the House, but not in the Senate, where all 16 co-sponsors are Democrats.  Still, both growers and farmworkers support the bill, and it may have a chance of passing, even if more comprehensive immigrant reform legislation cannot be agreed upon. A New York Times editorial called it "a model compromise, mixing pro-business pragmatism with a commitment to protecting workers."