Immigration reform, including legal status for farmworkers, is vital for assuring U.S. economic strength, said chairman Jerry Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Congress has deadlocked repeatedly over immigration, whether comprehensive legislation or piecemeal reforms, but President Biden, on his first day in office, called for a thorough overhaul of immigration law.
Biden’s plan would make undocumented farmworkers eligible for green cards if they meet specific requirements, which the United Farm Workers union says would be passing criminal background checks and proving they had worked in agriculture for at least 100 days in four of the preceding five years. Half of U.S. farmworkers, or around 1.25 million people, are believed to be undocumented.
“Our immigration laws are in need of reform. I’m hopeful this Congress will get something done,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who chairs the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration. She sponsored an ag labor bill that passed the House on a strong bipartisan vote, 260-165, in 2019 but died in the Senate last year. The bill offered temporary legal status for undocumented immigrants who continued to work in agriculture and a modernization of the seasonal H-2A visa for guestworkers, including permission for year-round agricultural employment.
During an immigration subcommittee hearing, Republicans said stronger border security was the quid pro quo for changes in immigration law, such as “reform [of] our temporary ag workers program.” Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, for example, referred approvingly to Trump administration crackdowns on border crossings. “That is a bold reform that has truly worked,” he said.
“To maintain and strengthen our position as a leader among developed nations, immigration reform must be part of our overall strategy for economic reform legislation,” said Nadler, of New York, who took part in the hearing. He cited Lofgren’s farmworker bill as well as a bill to give legal status to undocumented “dreamers,” who were brought into the country while children, and people who were granted temporary protected status. “It is incumbent on us to pass these and other measures as soon as possible and to build upon these successes to improve our immigration system to the benefit of our country.”
Subcommittee members, and the experts called to testify, clashed over the impact of immigration.
“There is a remarkable amount of agreement among economists” that immigrants have a positive impact on the economy overall, said Jennifer Hunt, a professor at Rutgers who was part of a 2017 National Academy of Sciences report, “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.” Immigrants reduce neither average wages nor employment rates among Americans, because the larger workforce allows more specialization of labor, she said. The NSA report, however, said that immigration puts downward pressure on the wages of low-skilled workers.
“It is silent on the magnitude,” said Hunt. “My own assessment of the academic literature is that the negative effect is small,” though still a matter of concern. “Raising low wages should be a priority,” she said, but not through restrictions on immigration.
Labor lawyer Peter Kirsanow said that illegal immigration had disproportionate effects on the income of Black men because they often compete with the newcomers for low-wage jobs. “This is a discrete and powerful problem here in the Black community,” he said. Compounding the problem, said Kirsanow, is that undocumented workers will take jobs with unscrupulous employers who intentionally pay lower wages.
“It is the employers who are depressing wages,” responded Marielena Hincapie of the National Immigration Law Center, which supports immigration reform. Hincapie advocates the passage of several reform bills, including an improved version of Lofgren’s ag labor bill with more safeguards against the mistreatment of farmworkers
To watch a video of the immigration subcommittee hearing or read written testimony from four witnesses, click here.