SALINAS CALIFORNIAN

January 10, 2007

Growers to back guest worker program
 

Legislation would help ease labor shortages, backers say

A corps of California growers is headed to Washington, D.C., this week to campaign for a Senate bill that would create a guest worker program.

The bill would grant as many as 1.5 million farm laborers legal status to keep working in the United States - and possibly ease labor shortages seen on farms from California to Texas.

Jim Bogart, president of the Salinas-based Grower-Shipper Association of Central California, said Tuesday he fully supports the bill, known as "AgJobs."

"We've argued for a long time for having a legal work force in agriculture - and (for) AgJobs," Bogart said.

A similar proposal was defeated last year after legislators stonewalled immigration reform. But farm lobbyists are betting the stand-alone bill, co-sponsored by Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Republican Sen. Larry Craig and set to be introduced today, will find new supporters in the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress.

Growers say aggressive security patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border have created a labor shortage that's left apples hanging on trees in Washington state, marred berry harvests in Oregon and delayed the onion harvest in Texas. The American Farm Bureau Federation has warned labor shortages could cause $5 billion in losses to the agriculture industry.

The economic threat is particularly acute in California, the nation's top agricultural state, where more than one-third of the nation's farm workers are employed, California farmers say. Last summer, a quarter of the pear crop in rural Lake County rotted on the field when pickers never showed up, said Toni Scully, a pear packer there.

"Throughout the summer, farmers were cobbling together workers to meet their immediate needs," said Jack King, national public affairs manager for the California Farm Bureau Federation. "When we failed to push something through last year, we vowed we'd be back."

In Monterey County, the tightening work force has been a concern over the past couple of years, Bogart said, especially in the region's strawberry fields.

Steady work force helps valley

Bob Perkins, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, said it's no surprise that some farms throughout the state are seeing fewer workers, although the situation in the Salinas Valley is slightly different.

"Our labor force tends to be a year-round work force that's steady and not seasonal or transient ... so we're a little less sensitive to the labor shortage than other places," Perkins said.

Although Perkins said he hasn't seen the new bill, the bureau usually supports guest worker programs that maintain the country's agricultural industry.

"If we're going to be doing anything, this (bill) is the right thing to be doing," he said.

The bill would create a pilot program allowing people who have worked in agriculture for at least 150 days a year for three years, or 100 days per year for five years, to apply for a green card. It would grant legal status to no more than 1.5 million workers over five years, some of whom could apply for citizenship.

The measure passed the Senate last year as part of a larger immigration bill, but failed when the House and Senate deadlocked over broader reforms. It will likely face opposition from conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, an influential Washington think tank that argues the guest workers would attempt to bring their families with them, causing an extra burden on social services that would cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Estimates of the bill's fiscal impact vary widely.

Hopeful, but no predictions

Growers and farm worker advocates don't agree on how to fix a system that has allowed an estimated 12 million immigrants to enter the country illegally. But both say the beginning of a solution is the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act of 2007, dubbed "AgJobs," which would speed up worker approvals under the current H2-A program, a federal contract that brings agricultural workers to the U.S. to fill jobs few Americans will take.

Several hundred temporary laborers already come to California legally each year on H2-A visas. But since the 1960s, when the last guest worker program between the U.S. and Mexico ended amid allegations of worker mistreatment, a majority of workers have crossed the border without documents.

Nearly all of California's farm workers were born in Mexico, and 57 percent of the labor force lacks authorization to work in the United States, up from 9 percent in 1990, according the state division of the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Virtually everybody agrees that agriculture is an industry that cannot do well without the undocumented worker," Feinstein said in an interview with the Associated Press. "And the people are coming to the realization that there won't be a comprehensive immigration bill. The first step was taken with the border security bill. (A guest worker program) is the next logical step."

While he's hopeful AgJobs will earn approval, Bogart said past experiences with failed immigration reform bills have left him jaded, unwilling to make predictions.

"If (the bill) doesn't pass, we'll continue in the same predicament as we've had in the last several years," he said. "But if it does pass, it will afford some avenue of relief.