THE PACKER

February 20, 2006

Idaho senator champions immigration reform, expects bill by early May

By Tom Karst

National Editor

Political torpedoes be damned, Sen. Larry Craig is moving full steam ahead to reform U.S. immigration law in a way that will account for the needs of agricultural employers.

Craig, R-Idaho, has taken on critics in his home state of Idaho and prodded Republican leaders in the Senate and the White House to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform.

With eight years of working for immigration reform, Craig has been the key conservative voice in support of the bipartisan Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act (informally called AgJobs).

Liberal support for AgJobs from Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., illustrates the ideological span of the legislation’s backers.

Sharon Hughes, executive  vice president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, Washington, D.C., said, “He has been the go-to guy.”

Hughes said that while others in Congress have been “running scared” on the immigration issue, Craig has defeated what she claims is anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Craig was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1990 and was re-elected in 1996 and 2002.

Craig said although his opponents grab headlines, he is committed to a resolitopn of the problem.

“Any of us who inter into the immigration debate need to be forewarned that immigration has a lot of critics,” Craig acknowledged Feb. 7.

In fact, the Minuteman Project, Huntington Beach, Calif., organized a rally in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 8.  The founder of the group, Jim Gilchrist, called the agricultural guest worker program “tantamount to slave trading” in a Feb. 2 news release.

Despite the vocal opposition, Craig believes the Senate Judiciary Committee will mark up an immigration bill by early May.

“It’s not a question of ‘Do we need to change the law and make it work?’ but ‘We are going to change the law because it doesn’t work,’” he said.

Success in immigration policy will be in the form of a three-legged stool, he said.  One leg is border enforcement and access, while the second leg is interior control and the third leg is a legal process that will allow guest workers to perorm needed jobs in the U.S.

“Do we get there in the end, or do the Tancredos need to demagogue this issue for another year?  I don’t know,” Craig said Feb. 7.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., has one of the loudest voices against guest worker provisions in immigration reform and spoke at the Feb. 8 Minuteman Rally.

In a Feb. 1 release, Tancredo said Congress passed a blanket amnesty in 1986 on the promise that border security would come later.

“We all remember the ’86 bait and switch, and we won’t be fooled again,” he said.

Tancredo said there is no way to determine if guest workers are needed until the borders are sealed and the government controls the interior.

Craig said the enforcement-only approach is the easiest place for Capitol Hill politicians to go.

“The round-them-up, lock-them-up and throw-them-out attitude doesn’t solve the problem,” he said.  “it makes great political rhetoric, but that is all it does.”

As surely as border control doesn’t work now, Craig said members of Congress must remember that throwing more money at the border isn’t the cure-all either.

The House passed an enforcement-focused immigration bill in late 2005, and the Senate soon will consider its version.

Craig would like a separate agricultural title in the immigration bill, because agriculture, because agriculture has a different pay scale from the construction industry.  If agriculture has to pay the same wage as builders, American agriculture could face bigger problems than ever, he said.

Some far lobbyists have urged Craig and other backers of AgJobs to work with a competing immigration reform package offered by Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.

“The law has to be broader based agriculturally than the Saxby Chambliss version,” Craig said.  “The old H-2A program doesn’t work, period, end of statement, for all but a very few,” he said.

The H-2A process can process 40,000 to 45,000 workers when more than a million workers may be needed, he said.

The conflict between those that use the H-2A program and those who don’t and pay slightly lower wages must be bridged, he said.

Another question in the Senate legislation will be what to do with illegal immigrants who have been in U.S. agriculture for five to six years.  Those workers may have taken on more oversight responsibility and have a family in the U.S.

Craig wonders if there is a way to treat those workers in what he calls a fair manner.

“Some say no, they entered illegally and they should exit the country and stand in line with the rest,” he said.  “That will be part of this debate and part of the law.”

Craig recalls agricultural employers first came to him in 1998 and said they were worried about being increasingly reliant on a illegal work force.

Since then, Craig said, the AgJobs coalition has found the broadest support of any farmworker package, drawing endorsements from growers and labor advocates.

“I’ve always said it was a very unique day when the American Farm Bureau Federation and the United Farm Workers stood side by side at a press conference and agreed on the same issue,” he said.

Craig said critics of guest worker programs for agriculture fail to understand the realities of the agricultural economy, noting that there are as many as six million jobs in the U.S. usually filled by migrant labor.

In fact, Craig – a member of the Special Committee on Aging – believes America’s aging population will soon stifle the economy.

“We as a nation are not producing a domestic workforce large enough to sustain and grow the economy,” he said.

By 2020, Craig said, if there is not a law that recognizes the need for legal participation of immigrants in the economy, the U.S. will suffer.

Craig said that reality is already seen in closed countries like Japan.

“Japan has struggled for nearly 12 years to get their economy growing again,” he said.

Besides helping the U.S. compete in the world economy, he said, immigrants help fuel the needs of Social Security and entitlement programs that depend on a growth economy.