The Wall Street Journal

April 20, 2005
POLITICS AND POLICY
Farmworker-Residency Measure Stalls in Senate
By DAVID ROGERS
 
The Senate voted to expand visa opportunities for foreign workers seeking employment in the U.S., but stopped short of helping immigrant farm workers already in American fields to earn permanent legal residency.

 

The action came as Republican leaders redoubled their efforts to win passage tonight or tomorrow of an underlying $80 billion-plus emergency spending bill to help fund the war in Iraq as well as President Bush's foreign aid initiatives in the Mideast.

Amendments adopted last night would tap an estimated 140,000 unused employment visas for skilled workers from previous years to help cope with shortages now in nurses and engineers. And in response to pressure from the lumber, tourism and fishing industries, rules governing temporary visas for lower-skilled guest workers would be relaxed to allow about 35,000 more employees into the U.S. this year.

But a bipartisan initiative to cope with similar needs in agricultural employment stalled as senators split over the sensitive question of how much to help these low-income workers, who have often entered the country illegally, but have since proved to be law-abiding and important to the economy.

On the crucial 53-45 roll call, proponents fell short of the 60-vote majority needed to cut off debate, and were forced to withdraw. But the fact that a majority of the Senate held together behind the initiative shows its durability and the power of the farm-worker issue in any larger immigration debate this year.

 

"I am not disappointed with that vote," said Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho), the lead sponsor with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.). And Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) predicted ultimate success: "This is a coalition with legs."

 

That coalition unites labor and state farm groups by promising both to improve the agricultural guest-worker program and provide a path for immigrant workers who have a proven employment record to begin to move toward establishing permanent legal residency.

 

Critics argue that permanent residency smacks of amnesty and will encourage unlimited illegal immigration. Supporters counter that any relief would be confined to an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 individuals, who must also survive tough criminal screening and continue to work in agriculture for at least three to six more years.

 

"It's not amnesty if you have to earn it," said Mr. Kennedy, who estimated that in many cases it will be seven to nine years before any applicant could start on the path to full citizenship.

 

Nonetheless, the "amnesty" label is an effective one politically, as seen in many House and Senate races last fall. It became the rallying cry yesterday for opponents, who captured only 21 votes for their alternative, but managed to peel off enough senators to hold support below the 60-vote target.

 

"It is a capitulation. It is a total collapse," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) of the legal-residency path set out in the farm-workers bill. And much as he wants changes in the guest-worker program, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.) argued that the residency provisions in the Craig-Kennedy bill constitute "bad law."

 

Mr. Chambliss had support yesterday from the conservative American Farm Bureau, which last year had allied with Mr. Craig. And the big political question now is whether this conservative farm bloc will feel compelled to compromise more on the residency issue if its producer members have any hope of getting the wage and administrative changes they want in the guest-worker program.

Arturo S. Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers union said the Craig-Kennedy bill is "clearly the only viable, bipartisan solution for our nation's agricultural industry. It places farm workers at the front of the immigration debate. No genuine immigration reform proposal has gotten this far. We will be back again."

 

Supporters took heart that they would have had 55 votes but for the absence of two Democratic allies. And five Republican members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who had previously supported the Craig-Kennedy bill, voted against cutting off debate, in part because of fears that it would slow down the emergency-spending bill.