The United Farm Workers union likened legislation for a new guestworker program, scheduled for a vote today in the House Judiciary Committee, to the post-war bracero program in that it would “undermine the wages and working conditions of all agricultural workers.” The bill, by Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte, will be considered at the same session as a bill to require all employers to use the E-Verify system to check if applicants can work legally.
The Goodlatte bill would create a new, year-round H-2C visa for agricultural workers that would allow them, for the first time, to work in processing plants. The USDA would run the new visa program, which allows a lower pay rate than now required, and could issue 500,000 new visas each year. The UFW says the result would be lower pay for the existing workforce and allow employers to bring in foreign workers without trying to hire locally.
Farm groups want a reliable workforce, and they have applauded the Goodlatte bill but have been wary of the E-Verify bill, sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith, which they see as a threat to the labor supply. More than half of agricultural workers are believed to be undocumented.
The UFW said, “The one thing that would stabilize agriculture quickly” is passage of bills sponsored by Democrats in the House and Senate for a “blue card,” authorizing the presence of undocumented farmworkers who pay a fine and pass a background check. The bills offer a three-to-five-year path to citizenship for workers who stay in agriculture.
Earlier this month, Goodlatte scheduled and then postponed a committee vote on his guestworker bill.