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Agriculture

Friday, May. 15, 2009

Feinstein offers guest-worker proposal

But odds of its passage don't look promising

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WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced an ambitious agricultural guest-worker bill that faces a harder road than ever before.

Feinstein's legislation to legalize more than 2 million illegal immigrant farmworkers and their family members resembles similar bills regularly but unsuccessfully introduced since September 2003.

A former opponent of the agricultural guest-worker proposal, Feinstein now says it is needed to keep farms in business.

The legislation combines streamlining of the infrequently used H-2A guest-worker program with a legalization plan for farmworkers in the United States illegally.

"There is a farm emergency in this country," the San Francisco lawmaker said Thursday in a half-hour Senate speech, and "most of it is caused by the absence of farm labor."

Illegal immigrant farmworkers could attain temporary legal status after meeting certain criteria, including a commitment to keep working in agriculture for several years. Eventually, they could apply to become U.S. citizens.

"There are very few Americans who are willing to take the jobs in a hot field, doing backbreaking labor," Feinstein said, "and that's just a fact."

There is much about the 105-page bill that is familiar. The coalition supporting the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act, or AgJOBS, remains largely intact. The United Farm Workers of America supports the legislation, as do farm groups such as the California Farm Bureau Federation.

The evidence offered in support of the bill is also familiar. Feinstein on Thursday resurrected previously told stories about farmers hurt by worker shortages, such as Lake County pear farmer Toni Scully, whose lost-crop plight was first publicized in 2006. Feinstein used a 3-year-old photo of Scully to help make her case.

But a coalition of border security advocates and other skeptics remains intact, too, and in some potentially important ways the advocates have lost clout.

The original Republican co-author of the AgJOBS effort, Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, has retired, his reputation tarnished by an arrest in an airport men's room. None of the 17 Senate co-sponsors of Feinstein's bill are Republican.

The original Democratic author and a longtime force in immigration politics, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, is all but out of commission with brain cancer. Kennedy has missed 69 of the past 73 Senate votes taken since April 1, Senate records show.

Legislation supporters insist that even getting the bill introduced is an important step forward.

"You've got to put your marker down," said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual, a grower association. "You've got to be prepared."

Nonetheless, immigration overall lacks the kind of public visibility that usually is the prerequisite for legislative action on such a contentious issue.

By October 2008, 5 percent of voters identified immigration as the most important issue in their presidential vote.

Even among Latino voters surveyed by the Pew Hispanic Center in January, immigration lagged behind the economy, education, health care, national security and the environment in the ranking of important issues.

Bee Washington Bureau reporter Michael Doyle can be reached at mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com or 202-383-0006.