Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2005 - I
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I want to make some remarks today on the Defense supplemental we have before us. It is critical we pass that legislation. I have been exceedingly disappointed that critical legislation to support our troops who are serving us in Iraq and Afghanistan and other areas around the world is being held up by what now appears to be a prolonged and extensive debate on immigration. More than that, we are being asked to vote on a very significant immigration legislation. No. 1, the AgJOBS bill is 105 pages. As I read it, Mr. President, as I know you have, it is breathtakingly deficient. It will undermine our current immigration system, make it much worse. It is an abomination. Yet I understand at one point the sponsors, Senators CRAIG and KENNEDY, said they had over 60 Senators prepared to vote for it. Now, they are peeling off right and left and we may certainly hope there are not votes sufficient to pass this legislation we will be voting on now on a defense bill.
I was in an Immigration Subcommittee hearing yesterday, chaired by Senator Cornyn who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration. It was a very informative and important hearing. He has been working on this for many months now, trying to hammer out something that makes sense for America. Yet now we are rushing through to vote on this bill. I want to share some thoughts about it.
I want to strongly oppose the AgJOBS Act. I oppose it, not only because it has nothing to do with the money we need to support our troops in Iraq and will no doubt, and already has, slow down the bill, but because it undermines the rule of law by rewarding illegal aliens with amnesty. It creates no mechanisms in the law that will help bring integrity to a system that is failing badly. It is a huge step backward. It would be a disaster, if you want to know the truth.
It contains a host of bad provisions that should not be law and, as a result, has even lost the support of much of the agriculture community the sponsors claim to be so much in need of it.
It will provide amnesty to 1 million illegal aliens and their families in addition, illegal aliens who broke the immigration law to come here illegally and then again broke the law by working here illegally. The AgJOBS bill will treat unfairly those people who come to the United States legally to work in agriculture, and do their work and comply with the rules dutifully. They do not benefit at all from this amnesty. Only illegals can benefit from its passage. That is a fundamental principle a great nation ought to think about. This is not an itty-bitty matter. We are going to provide a benefit to somebody who violates a law and deny it to somebody who complies with the law? What kind of policy can that be? How can one justify such a policy?
Under the AgJOBS bill, illegal aliens are granted not only the right to stay here and work here, but they are put on the road to citizenship, a virtual guaranteed path to citizenship unless they get arrested for a felony--not arrested, you have to be convicted of a felony. Or if you are convicted of three misdemeanors, that can get you out--three or more.
As I noted, the legal farm workers under the current H-2A program will get nothing. They are certainly not put on a road to citizenship. Legal workers will not become permanent resident workers and then citizens under the AgJOBS bill. If the AgJOBS bill passes, we will state to the world that America is in fact rewarding people who break the law to the disadvantage of those who follow it.
The sponsors of the amendment say this is not amnesty, it is earned legalization; it is adjustment of status; it is rehabilitation. Those are misnomers, to say the least. The AgJOBS bill is amnesty, plain and simple. It will give illegal aliens the very thing they broke the law to get, the ability to live and work inside the United States without having to wait in line the same as everybody else to get it. The amnesty contained in AgJOBS does not stop there. It goes even further and gives illegal aliens a direct path from their new legal status to U.S. citizenship.
Getting rewarded by being handed the exact thing you broke the law to get plus the ability to get citizenship is amnesty, I think, under any definition of it. It even goes far beyond the proposals President Bush has made that some have called amnesty, and he says it is not.
I am somewhat dubious about some of the ideas he has proposed. But his principles are clearly violated by this AgJOBS bill. Make no mistake about it, President Bush, for all his commitment to improving the ability of people to come to America to work, has never announced principles as breathtakingly broad as this.
Let us remind ourselves that criminal laws are involved here. Title 8, section 1325 of the United States Code says illegal entry into the United States is a misdemeanor on the first offense, a felony thereafter. Coming here illegally, regardless of why you came, is a criminal offense. Oftentimes, false documents and papers are submitted and filed. That is a criminal offense also.
Not only does it provide amnesty to illegal aliens who are already working here, it gives amnesty to the illegal alien's family, if their family is also illegally here. But if their family is still abroad and not here, the AgJOBS amendment allows the illegal alien to send for their family and bring them here, cutting in line ahead of others who made the mistake of trying to comply with our laws rather than break them.
According to a Pew report, there are at least 840,000 illegal immigrant workers who would be eligible for amnesty under this bill. Adding in one spouse and a minor child for each of those, the estimate can easily increase to 3 million immigrants--3 million, all of whom are defined only in the agricultural community, not in any other community in the country where it seems to me we would have a very difficult time on principle defining why agriculture workers get such beneficial treatment compared to any other worker who might be here.
Not only does AgJOBS give amnesty to the current people who are in our country illegally, but it extends that amnesty to illegal aliens who once worked in America but have already gone home. It actually encourages them to come back to the United States and puts them on a route that leads them to full citizenship. These are people who have returned home to their country, and we are putting them ahead of lawful workers who come here and may also want to be citizens one day.
The AgJOBS amendment will create a category of ``lawful, temporary resident status'' of agricultural workers who have worked at least 100 days in the 18 months prior to December 31, 2004. These are supposed to be workers who were here working, contributing to our economy, but they only have to work 100 days.
You have to read these acts. You can't just believe what you hear about them. I was trying to study it last night and things kept hitting me that almost take your breath away. One hundred workdays--do you know how that is defined in the act? An individual who is employed 1 or more hours in agriculture per day, that is a workday. For literally as many or as few as 100 hours of agricultural work in 18 months you are put on this track. That is not good policy. I don't know who wrote this bill. The details of it are extremely troubling.
Because the bill now only applies to agricultural workers, it is true the entire illegal population that is estimated to be in our country of 8 to 10 million will not be legalized under the bill. However, we can be quite sure the majority of those 1.2 million illegal agricultural workers will apply for amnesty if this amendment is passed.
Again I ask, what real principle can we stand on to say we need to give these people who are here illegally preference over people who might be working in some other industry?
Under the AgJOBS bill, an illegal alien is not deportable as soon as his paperwork is filed. No factfinding or adjudication on the application is necessary. It kicks in a protection that he cannot be deported. Maybe he has been charged with a felony, but the trial hasn't come along yet. It seems to me the procedure is guaranteed to go forward and they will be able to be put on this track. After the illegal alien gets the first round of amnesty, being granted temporary legal status under the AgJOBS bill, the bill gives them the opportunity to continue working in agriculture and apply for permanent resident status here in the United States. Thereafter that puts you in a position to become a citizen--guaranteed, unless you get in some big trouble.
There is no limit on the number of individuals who would be allowed to adjust to lawful permanent residence and eventually become citizens. If the illegal alien who meets the bill criteria has already left the United States, the legislation actually would encourage them to come back through the border to become a lawful temporary worker. As I read the legislation, they are allowed to do that by filing a petition. I believe it is called a preliminary petition. This petition is pretty interesting. The petition fundamentally is filed at the border with an officer, it says. And who is the officer? An officer is a member of a farm workers organization or an employer group, both of which are not representing the interests of the citizens of the United States but both of which have a special interest in having the alien come into the country. That is how they make their money. And they have to accept it if he produces virtually any document at all that would say he or she has worked in the country at sometime previously.
Later on my breath was taken away where it says in this act that the documents filed by the illegal alien are confidential. Read this:
Except as otherwise provided in this section, the Secretary [that's the Secretary of Homeland Security, who is supposed to be supervising all of this, under his jurisdiction] nor any official or employee of the Homeland Security or Bureau or Agency thereof may use the information furnished by the applicant pursuant to an application under this section. .....
It goes on to say:
Files and records prepared for the purposes of this section by qualified designated entities [these are these employer groups. These are the farm worker organizations] are confidential, and the Secretary shall not have access to such files or records relating to the alien without the consent of the alien, except as allowed by a court order issued pursuant to paragraph 6.
Great Scott, you mean you file an application that is supposed to justify you to come into the country, and it is supposed to allow you to come in here, but the drafters of this legislation are so distrustful of our Government and the Secretary of Homeland Security that he is not even able to see the documents? I don't know how this became the policy of the United States.
The fundamental principle is that no nation is required to allow anyone to come into their country because they have sovereignty over their country. They set standards and try to adhere to them. Wise countries such as ours are very generous about how many people are allowed to come in. Some are far more strict--most are, in fact, more strict than are we. But no one has a right, automatically, to enter somebody's country. You enter by permission of that country. I don't think there would be anything wrong to ask the applicant to at least file a petition so the designated governmental official in charge of the operation can see it, instead of it being secret from them.
Frank Gaffney recently wrote a column entitled ``Stealth Amnesty.'' He is the president of the Center for Security Policy. We do have some security problems involving terrorism involved around our country. He summarized the AgJOBS bill by saying this:
By the legislation's own terms, an illegal alien will be turned into ``an alien lawfully admitted for temporary residence'' .....
Just by fiat.
Provided they had managed to work unlawfully in an agricultural job in the United States for a minimum of 100 hours; in other words, for 2 1/2 weeks during 18 months prior to August 31, 2003.
I will continue to talk about the bizarre nature of this application process. Someone who is even not in the country who wants to come back into the country, as I understand it, who has worked in our country illegally for some period of time and have returned to their country, they want to come back; they file an application, a preliminary application, I believe the phrase is. They do not file it with the Government, they file it with a farm workers group or an employer group, both of which do not have a real interest in seeing that the laws of the United States are enforced.
It goes on. It is difficult to understand. I read from page 24 of the 205-page bill:
..... the Secretary shall not have access to such files or records relating to the alien without the consent of the alien, except as allowed by a court order.
It goes on to say that ``neither the Secretary nor any official'' shall ``use the information furnished by the applicant pursuant to an application filed under this section,'' provided they cannot use it ``for any purpose other than to make a determination on the application or for enforcement.''
Then it goes on to state that ``nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the use or release for immigration enforcement purposes or law enforcement purposes'' of information contained in files and records of the Department of Homeland Security but that does not give them the ability to use the information contained in the paperwork filed with the employer group. Those papers the employer does not give to the Department of Homeland Security are kept secret and not available to law enforcement, the bill goes on to add that no information in the application can be used ``other than information furnished by an applicant pursuant to the application or any other information derived from the application that is not available for any other source.''
I was a prosecutor. I know how hard it was to handle these things. This bill will create a situation that makes these documents virtually unusable in making sure this system has integrity. Why do we want to do that? What possible reason do we want to have in legislation of this kind that would say when you come here and you present documentation into evidence that justifies coming here to do that--why shouldn't the information you present in your application be part of the files of the Government, be reviewable at any time by any agency of the Government, for any purpose for which they want to use it? Everybody else has to do that.
Before you can be a Senator, you have to disclose all your finances. That does not take me long, but for some people it takes a long time. We have to do that, but somebody who is not even a citizen, not even a resident of this country, can keep information secret even though they are asking to become legal permanent residents eligible for citizenship.
Mr. President, I will quote from an article by Mr. Frank Gaffney. This confirms what I have been saying, which is undisputable about the bill. We are not at a time in our history when we should be doing this. It is exactly opposite of what we should be doing if we want to create a new system of immigration that allows more people to come here legally, to work as their schedules are fit, with employers who may need them.
We can do that. We should do that. We can do better about that. We can improve current law. But to just willy-nilly allow people who could very well be very marginal part-time employees, who never worked much--to give them permanent resident status and citizenship for violating our laws is thunderously erroneous, in my view. It is just not good.
Mr. Gaffney goes on to say:
Once so transformed--What he means by that is once you have been transformed from an illegal person to a legal person by filing an application--they can stay in the U.S. indefinitely while applying for permanent resident status. From there, it is a matter of time before they can become citizens, so long as they work in the agricultural sector for 675 hours over the next six years.
But you only have to work, really, 2,000 hours, or 1 year out of 6 years, but you have to stay in the agricultural sector.
Some have called this creating indentured servants. Why isn't it a form of indentured servitude? You have to come here. You are required to work for 6 years in agriculture. You cannot take some other type employment.
The Craig[-Kennedy] bill would confer this amnesty as an exchange for indentured servitude. The amnesty will be conferred--Mr. Gaffney goes on to say--not only on farmworking illegal aliens who are in this country--estimates of those eligible run to more than 800,000. It would also extend the opportunity to those who otherwise qualified but had previously left the United States. No one knows how many would fall in this category and want to return as legal workers. But, a safe bet is that there are hundreds of thousands of them.
If any were needed, S. 1645 [the AgJOBS bill] offers a further incentive to the illegals: Your family can stay, as well. Alternatively, if they are not with you, [and you are in the United States] you can bring them in, too--cutting in line ahead of others who made the mistake of abiding by, rather than ignoring, our laws.
So the system would work this way. I do not think anyone would dispute this. Someone is here illegally. They are working in agricultural work. By the way, it defines, at the beginning of this legislation, what an ``employer'' means in agricultural employment. And it says:
The term ``employer'' means any person or entity, including any farm labor contractor and any agricultural association, that employs workers in agricultural employment.
So you have to work for an agricultural employer, but that does not indicate to me that you have to be working in agriculture. Maybe the company has some workers who are agricultural, and 90 percent of them are not. Maybe you could work for them the way this thing is written, regardless.
But the way this system would work is if they were here illegally over a period of 18 months--if they were here just 18 months--and had worked 100 hours in agricultural employment during that 18 months, the Secretary shall make them a lawful temporary resident--required to, unless they committed a serious crime or something.
Then, over the next 6 years, if they were to work in agriculture for up to 2,060 hours--that is about 1 year's work--over 6 years in agriculture, they become a legal permanent resident. Then if you just hang along there for 5 years, you can become a citizen.
Now, I do not see where this can be supported by somebody saying they earned their citizenship. Citizenship should not be bought and paid for in labor. Why? Well, they worked for compensation, they wanted to work for compensation, this is not something we forced them to come here and do, they were paid like every other American is paid. You earn your pay for the work you perform. I do not know that you should earn additional benefits because you work. All the while, of course, the lawful H-2A workers are still required to go home when their time is up. They only receive pay for working, why should we give illegal workers more than that.
The AgJOBS amendment goes so far as to provide free legal counsel to illegal aliens who want to receive this amnesty. All Americans don't get free legal counsel. There is no notice in this bill that suggests they have to have any low-income level or have no assets to get the legal services this bill gives to illegal alien workers. It provides that the Legal Services Corporation can expend their funds and shall not be prevented from providing legal assistance directly related to an application for adjustment of status under this section.
Again, we are now giving them free legal status, free legal services, and we are allowing them to go to these groups, these farmworker organizations or employer groups, to help them with that. The AgJOBS amendment provides all that in that fashion.
Let me talk about another item in this amendment an item that restricts the rights of employers. I don't know how every State does it. I think probably a substantial number of States, like my State of Alabama, have laws that provide for employment at will; that is, unless an employee has a contract, they work for the company and they can leave the company whenever they want and the company can terminate them whenever they want. That is Alabama law. I am rather certain of that. But if you come in under this act, you get an enhanced protection over American citizens. Prohibition: No alien granted temporary resident status under subsection (a) may be terminated from employment by any employer during the period of temporary resident status except for just cause. And they set up an administrative law process, an arbitration proceeding to have all these trials. The burden of proof is on the employer to demonstrate just cause for termination, and he has the burden to prove it by a preponderance of the evidence.
Once again, we are entering into a complex legal deal here we need to avoid, providing legal rights and protections to noncitizens who have violated the law that are not available to American citizens.
Presumably, there are two farmworkers on this farm somewhere. One of them is an American citizen--in Alabama, let us say--and the boss wants to fire one of them. If he fires the temporary resident alien, he has to go through arbitration and hire a lawyer and defend himself and be sued. As a matter of fact, it goes on to say that doesn't end it. That is one additional remedy the worker can have. He can still sue the employer for any kind of fraud, abuse or harassment or any other thing that some trial lawyer may pursue. So it doesn't end it. The evidence apparently can be utilized from that trial into a next trial.
I am concerned about that. I believe it is an unnecessary litigation that is going to impact our country adversely. That is why you will see that agricultural groups are not supporting this AgJOBS bill.
What we really should do is follow the recommendations made to us over the years by immigration commissions of Congress that have been created for the specific purpose of providing advice and counsel to us on how to effect immigration reform. In 1992, 6 years after the last illegal alien agricultural worker amnesty passed in 1986 as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, the IRCA, the Commission on Agricultural Workers issued a report to Congress that studied the effects of the 1986 agricultural amnesty called the Special Agricultural Worker Program.
One of the first things the Commission acknowledged was the number of workers given amnesty under the bill had been severely underestimated. The Commission reported the SAW Program legalized many more farmworkers than expected:
It appears that the number of undocumented workers who had worked in seasonal agricultural services prior to the IRCA was generally underestimated.
What else did the Commission find? Did it suggest that this solved the problem of workers in America in agricultural industry? Did it fix the problem that they tried to fix in 1986?
They say this:
Six years after the IRCA was signed into law, the problems within the system of agricultural labor continued to exist. In most areas, an increasing number of newly arriving unauthorized workers compete for available jobs, reducing the number of workers available to all harvest workers--
That is, those who were given amnesty and those who are citizens--and contributing to lower annual earnings.
Did the Commission recommend we pass a second legalization program such as AgJOBS? What did they say that might help us on that? They said this:
A worker specific and/or industry specific legalization program, as contained in the IRCA, should not be the basis of future immigration policy.
This was 6 years after we did the last one. They had a commission study it. This is what they concluded. What do they suggest we ought to do? What did the Commission recommend? They said the only way to have structure and a stable agricultural market was to increase enforcement of our immigration laws, including employer sanctions, and reduce illegal immigration:
Illegal immigration must be curtailed. This should be accomplished with more effective border controls, better internal apprehension mechanisms, and enhanced enforcement of employer sanctions. The U.S. Government should also develop better employment eligibility and identification systems, including fraud-proof work authorization documents for all persons legally authorized to work in the United States so that employer sanctions can more effectively deter the employment of unauthorized workers.
That is what they recommended. That is what we haven't done. In fact, we are in an uproar over this rather minor Sensenbrenner language the House put on their bill that deals with national security and a way to make ID secure and other matters consistent with recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. So it appears that the Senate does not want to do that but what we want to do is continue to pass these amnesty bills. This should not be happening.
Restoring our ability and commitment to successfully enforce our immigration laws is the only long-term solution. A real solution will not reward illegal behavior by handing out amnesty to people here illegally, but instead will require effective control of our borders, active policing in the interior, and participation among all levels of law enforcement. Of course, it includes improving the laws that we have to allow, where needed, more people to come legally in a system that actually works. But to have any system at all, of course, that must be created with an enforcement mechanism that works. We have never created such a mechanism and now it is time to do so.
I introduced a bill last Congress--and will introduce, again--that would strengthen the United States' ability to enforce our immigration laws. The Homeland Security Enhancement Act would clarify for law enforcement officers of a State, county, and city that they do have authority to enforce immigration violations while carrying out their routine duties.
They don't have authority to deport or try, but they have a responsibility, in most instances, to detain people they identify as being here in violation of the law and contact Federal officials to process that individual after that. They have been told, and been confused about, what their authority is. I have written a law review article on it, aided by my assistant here, my counsel, Cindy Hayden. We researched the law and came to that conclusion.
The law provides the authority, in virtually every instance, but lawyers have confused cities and counties and police and sheriffs, and they are not participating in anything the way they would like. We are not talking about forcing them to do anything. We are trying to make sure we pass legislation that clarifies existing law and makes it clear they have the ability to serve and assist our country. It would increase the amount of information regarding deportable illegal aliens entered into the FBI National Crime Information Center database, making the information more readily available to local officials.
This is a big, big deal. In the hearing Senator Cornyn chaired yesterday, we had a person from the Department of Homeland Security who is in charge of detention and removal, and what we learned was that over 80 percent of the people who are detained, processed and found to be here illegally are released on bail while the government arranges for their deportation. It is not surprising they don't show up to be deported. Even after they are given a hearing and found to be here in violation of the law, they are consistently released on bail, and 80 percent of those don't show up to be deported. Then, we now have some 400,000 absconders. Now, Mr. President, if a Senator gets a DUI in Kansas or someplace and you don't show up for court, they put your name in the database, and if you get stopped for speeding somewhere in some other State, they will pick it up. So they are a fugitive, but their information is not being put into the NCIC.
I know police officers. I was a prosecutor for over 15 years. I asked them about this. They tell me they do not even bother to call the Federal Immigration officials if they apprehend someone that is illegally here because they won't come and get them. So they have just given up. They are prepared to help. What a great asset that would be. But, no, we have not seen fit to do that.
But more importantly, the 400,000 absconders are not in the National Crime Information Center computer. So when a State officer apprehends someone, and they have a name and they want to run it through the wanted persons database they would use for an American citizen, they run the birth date, the driver's license, or other identifying characteristics, and it tells them whether there is a warrant out for their arrest.
That is how most people are caught today who violate the law and who are fugitives. Most of them are caught in simple traffic stops. Don't tell them because they will quit speeding. But that is how we catch them--when they get in a fight somewhere and the police runs their name and there is a warrant out in Texas for them for assault or something.
We raised Cain last year about that and asked the tough questions of a number of the Department officials. They said they would try. So out of 400,000, we learned there are about 40,000 of those names they found time to put in the NCI Center computer system that is available at city, county, and police offices out in the country. That indicates to me how confused we are about how to make this system work.
I want to say this. I absolutely believe that we have one big problem on our minds; that is, we think it cannot be done. We think we cannot enforce immigration laws, that we might as well just quit. Well, under our present way of doing so, that is correct. However, if we create a more generous way for people to come here legally that is simple and understandable, and if we enhance our enforcement abilities and if we quit rewarding those who come illegally, you will begin to see the numbers change. As a matter of fact, there is a tipping point out there I am absolutely convinced exists.
If we enhance the enforcement of those who come illegally, we quit providing those who are here illegally with benefits, we increase border enforcement, and we enhance the way for people to come here legally to work, and we make that easier and will get more support from countries from which these people come, we can tip this thing. As the number that come into the country illegally goes down, and as our enforcement effort and officers are increased, you will have a tremendous change in the number of enforcement officers per illegal. That is when you make progress. That is what happened in crime.
The crime rate has been dropping for the last 20 years. As it drops, we don't fire policemen. We have gotten more policemen per crime, so they have more time to work on crime. They are doing a better job of apprehending repeat offenders and putting them in jail. The crime rate has broken. Instead of going up, as it did in the 1960s and 1970s, it has been going down for over 20 years. We can do that here. It will affirm America's commitment to the rule of law. To do that, we are going to need additional bedspace for detention, and we cannot continue to release people who have been apprehended on the street so they just disappear again. We have to require the Federal Government to receive and process people who have been apprehended by local law enforcement. We need to make sure the system provides them a fair hearing, but it also needs to be a prompt hearing. If someone is in violation of the law, the system should work rapidly and not with great expense. Those are some of the things I am concerned about in the bill I have offered. But there are many other problems of a similar nature that need to be dealt with.
We are a nation of immigrants. America openly welcomes legal immigrants and new citizens who have the character, integrity, the decency, and the work ethic that have made this country great. But they are concerned, rightly, about the politicians in Washington who talk as though they hear them when they cry out for a system that works, and we say we are working on it. What do we do? We came up with an AgJOBS bill that absolutely goes in the wrong direction. The same people who are supporting that bill, for the most part--although not Senator LARRY CRAIG--are opposing my bill, for example, that would enhance law enforcement authority for local officers, and they wonder if we have any commitment at all here to enforce the law. They have every right to do so because I will tell you, from my experience in talking with police officers in my State, nothing is being done. Until we put our minds to it, nothing will be done.
How do we go from here? What should we do? In my view, we need to pass this emergency supplemental to support our troops. We need to reject all immigration amendments on it. We need to follow President Bush's lead and have a serious debate and discussion on this issue.
We need to agree on certain principles about how it will be conducted. We are going to have a legal system that works. We are going to be humane in how we treat people who come here. We are going to consider American needs. It is not going to be an unlimited number. And we are going to create a legal system that works.
We can do that, and we should do that. A lot of work is going on toward that end right now. Senator Kyl and Senator Chambliss have a major bill to deal with some of these issues. Senator Cornyn, a former justice of the Texas Supreme Court, a former attorney general of Texas, is doing a real good job in managing the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee and is considering all these issues. Then sometime later this year, I think, we might as well get serious, bring something up and try to make some progress. Who knows, maybe even the President should appoint an independent commission of people who understand this issue--we have had commissions before--and make some specific recommendations about how we ought to proceed. That could work, in my view.
Right now the American people lack confidence in us, and they have every right to lack confidence in us because we have created a system that is flawed, it is not working. It is an abomination, really.
I want to share this information with my colleagues. Farmers who are supposed to be benefiting from this act, the agriculture workers amnesty legislation, do not want it. Maybe some farm groups in Washington or lobbyists are for it. Maybe some big agricultural entities want it. But I have in my hands an open letter from the Southeastern Farmers Coalition. It is signed by a list of organizations and individual H-2A program participants, people who utilize farm workers from out of the country who are ``the overwhelming majority of H-2A program users in the country.''
The list of signatories to this letter is expansive, including the North Carolina Growers Association, the Mid-Atlantic Solutions, the Georgia Peach Council, AgWorks, the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Association, the Virginia Agricultural Growers Association, the Vidalia Onion Business Council--I am sure that is a sweet group--and the Kentucky-Tennessee Growers Association.
The letter states:
Farmers in the Southeastern United States are opposed to Senate bill S. 1645 introduced by Ted Kennedy and Larry Craig. It is an amnesty for illegal farm-workers. It does not reform the H-2A program. Please oppose this legislation.
The text of the letter, which asks me to oppose the bill, says:
[AgJOBS] is nothing more than a veiled amnesty. While everyone, it seems, agrees that the H-2A program desperately needs reform, this legislation does not fix the two most onerous problems with the program: the adverse effect wage rate and the overwhelming litigation brought by Legal Services groups against farmers using the H-2A program.
In fact, it explicitly provides for more such litigation. The letter goes on to say:
The Craig-Kennedy-Berman reform package provides a private right of action provision that goes far beyond legitimate worker protections and expands Legal Services' attorneys ability to sue growers in several critical areas. These lawyers, who have harassed program users with meritless lawsuits for years, will continue to attack small family farmers under the new statute.
Supporters of Craig-Kennedy-Berman have endorsed this alleged reform believing in a misguided fashion that it will bring stability to the agricultural labor market. It will not. It will create greater instability. As illegal farm workers earn amnesty, they will abandon their farm jobs for work in other industries.
Continuing this letter:
Many of the attached signatories have been actively involved in negotiations surrounding this legislation. The following groups have broken ranks with the American Farm Bureau.
As a matter of fact, I think the Farm Bureau has now switched sides on this bill, and they are no longer endorsing it. They are not supporting it now. They have changed their position.
They continue:
You are likely to hear that the majority of agriculture supports this bill. The industry, in fact, is split.
But, in fact, the trend has been the other way against it.
They go on:
History has demonstrated that the amnesty granted under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was a dismal failure for agriculture employers. Farm workers abandoned agricultural employment shortly after gaining amnesty and secured jobs in other industries.
I also received a letter last week from two growers in Alabama who favor improving the ability to utilize foreign workers. They strongly support that. But still they asked me to oppose the AgJOBS legislation.
Tom Bentley of Bentley Farms, which grows, packs, and ships peaches from Thorsby, AL, and Henry Williams, head of the Alabama Growers Association, write:
In the coming days, you may be asked to vote on legislation offered by Senator Larry Craig and Senator Edward Kennedy that purports to significantly reform the present H-2A agricultural worker program by providing an earned amnesty to hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers now present in the United States.
Despite claims that this bill is bipartisan and represents the interests of all agricultural employers, growers in the Southeastern United States do not support the passage of this legislation.
This bill is not H-2A reform as touted, it is simply an amnesty bill for a selected group of workers.
If farmers who make up a majority of H-2A employers
are opposed to AgJOBS because it is amnesty for illegal workers and it does not reform the H-2A program, why should we pass it? Who supports this amendment? I believe the supporters who are advocating it are really not in touch with the desires of the American people and the desires of the farmers they claim to represent. In fact, I am not sure the authors understand just how far this bill goes and just how many serious problems exist within it.
I do not think that I am out of touch with the American people. I certainly believe the principles I have advocated are consistent with the rule of law that I cherish in our country, and I am troubled to see it eroded in this fashion. I believe reform is necessary. I believe we can achieve reform. I believe we need to spend some time on it. I do not think it can be done piecemeal. I originally thought it had to be done comprehensively. Then somebody convinced me we could break it up. But the more I look at it, the more I see the nature of it. Why would we want to spend all this time on one group of workers, agricultural workers? There are other workers who are facing the same challenge. Why not fix this problem in a generous way for foreign workers to come and work, a generous way to achieve citizenship, a focus on the real needs of America, not just laboring immigrants. We need people who have Ph.D.s, brain power, scientific people who may cure cancer one day. We need more of those kinds of people, too.
We need to look at it comprehensively. Draw up a system that works. But one that allows us to honor the heritage we have been given as Americans, the heritage that draws so many people--our heritage of the rule of law--is being eroded terribly today.
I thank the Presiding Officer for the time, and I yield the floor.
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