SACRAMENTO BEE

May 28, 2006

Ag guest worker plan took a lot of tinkering

By Michael Doyle -- Bee Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Gary Condit's fingerprints are on the big immigration reform bill passed Thursday by the Senate.

His aren't the only ones. Many chefs cooked up the ideas in the 600-plus-page bill. Multiple moments, public and private, preceded the Senate's passing the bill by a deceptively easy 62-36 margin. Many more turning points are on the way.

"For all the good work we've done here in the past two weeks, it can be eliminated in a heartbeat," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., warned.

A tortuous path does await senators as they anticipate crucial negotiations with the House. But a brief look back at just one provision shows how some Capitol Hill roads become dead ends, some firm positions can flip, and some failures form the basis for ultimate success.

Consider several moments, years apart, in the long campaign for an agricultural guest worker program. The program granting legal status for up to 1.5 million undocumented farmworkers is only one part of the overall bill approved Thursday, but it's a part in which Californians have predominated.

One moment, near last week's climactic Senate vote: With minutes to go before voting, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Thursday afternoon was furiously scrambling on the Senate floor.

Visibly unhappy, Feinstein ripped through a newly received package of final amendments, vainly searching for language she wanted.

The agricultural guest worker program was intact. But some details on future work requirements and eligibility, which Feinstein and several other senators had agreed to, were missing.

"The (agriculture) program is apt to be one of the main features that will come out of a conference," Feinstein said Friday. "I want it to be right."

Feinstein ultimately reached a handshake agreement with Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., that the missing language -- covertly blocked by Chambliss -- will be included in a final bill.

Another moment, nearer the starting line: Condit is now political history, his congressional career having flamed out in the wake of federal intern Chandra Levy's disappearance in Washington. But in the fall of 2000, Condit had reached the pinnacle of his Capitol Hill influence as a close ally of then-Gov. Gray Davis.

At the time, large agricultural organizations had been trying unilaterally and without success for a guest worker program.

"They tried to wipe out all the protections for workers, and we beat them," said Rep. Howard Berman, D-Los Angeles. "They tried for a while to negotiate among themselves, and it didn't work."

Most definitively, the House in March 1996 had rejected Tracy Republican Rep. Richard Pombo's proposal for an agricultural guest worker plan that would have admitted up to 250,000 foreign workers for up to 10 months each year. Pombo's measure would not have put the workers on track toward U.S. residency or citizenship.

The House's 242-180 slapdown signaled the high-water mark of Pombo's influence in crafting a politically feasible guest worker program. In late 1999, with farm groups and labor organizations both stymied, Berman quietly approached the competing sides.

"He said, 'Would you be willing to sit down and talk with the ag industry?' " recalled Marc Grossman, a spokesman for the United Farm Workers. "It was a little different than what we were used to."

It was an accommodation for farmers, too. But Manuel Cunha, president of the Fresno-based Nisei Farmers League, said that after Pombo's defeat, "we regrouped, and said we can't do anything without cooperation."

An experienced immigration negotiator, Berman represents a district with a 70 percent Latino population. His counterpart in the new negotiations became Condit, closely allied with Central Valley growers. In a secret meeting convened at Los Angeles International Airport, Berman, Condit and others got the ball rolling.

Representatives from the UFW, Florida Legal Services and the nation's nursery industry, among others, worked out details. Lobbyists like Monte Lake, representing California farm groups, worked behind the scenes, while the lawmakers kept talks on track.

"There was a lot of going back and forth in the Capitol between Howard and Gary," recalled Mike Lynch, Condit's then-chief of staff and now the chief of staff of Modesto's Great Valley Center. "Everyone was surprised that everyone was marching on the same path."

By late 2000, the negotiators reached a guest worker program they wanted attached to an omnibus spending bill. At the last minute, though, then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, stepped on the brakes. Another three years of further negotiations ensued, with Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, replacing Condit as agriculture's tribune. Finally, after finessing a dispute over wage rates, farmers and workers in September 2003 unveiled the AgJobs package.

That original AgJobs package was conceptually close to what the Senate approved last week. It offers undocumented farmworkers legal U.S. residency and, eventually, citizenship, while reforming a much-criticized guest worker program.

From the start, Feinstein was skeptical. That troubled advocates, because of her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee and her reputation for deal-making.

"It is a magnet for illegal immigration," Feinstein said of the proposal during Senate debate on April 18, 2005. "What I do not support is creating a magnet that draws large additional numbers of illegal immigrants. Not only would this have a detrimental effect on our society, but it would harm the people we are trying to help."

The White House likewise weighed in to bottle up the bill. But by this March, after negotiating some relatively marginal changes in the proposal, Feinstein embraced the underlying concept. With Craig working his fellow Republicans, Feinstein successfully tacked the agriculture package onto the overall immigration bill.

Grossman of the UFW, welcoming Feinstein's switch, noted that "she had been getting it from both sides," as 500-plus farm, labor and church organizations had been urging support for the bill.

"I have found in the Senate," Berman said, "that it's easier to get things done with Senator Feinstein's support than over her opposition."

Now, it remains unclear whether the House will accept the guest worker plan.