#Why Sen. Feinstein's absence is a big problem for Democrats
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s monthslong absence from the Senate to recover in California from shingles has become a vexing problem for Democrats who want to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominees to the federal courts. Now there is some pressure from within her party, and her state, to resign.
With frustration mounting among Democrats, Feinstein on Wednesday asked to be temporarily replaced on the Senate Judiciary Committee while she recuperates. The statement came shortly after a member of California’s House delegation, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, called on her to step down, saying it is “unacceptable” for her to miss votes to confirm judges who could be weighing in on abortion rights, a key Democratic priority.
It will not be easy to temporarily replace Feinstein on the influential committee. Republicans could block such a move, given that the full Senate must approve committee assignments.
The conundrum for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stems from his party’s fragile hold on power. Democrats are clinging to a 51-49 majority in an aging Senate where there have been several absences due to health issues this year.
A look at the politics surrounding Feinstein’s absence, and how Democrats are navigating the situation:
EXTENDED ABSENCE
Feinstein, 89, has been away from the Senate since Feb. 27, just two weeks after she announced she would not run for reelection in 2024.
Her office disclosed March 2 that she had been hospitalized in San Francisco and was being treated for a case of shingles. “I hope to return to the Senate later this month,” she said in a statement at the time.
Now, six weeks later, Feinstein’s office will not give a timeline for her return, even as Congress comes back into session Monday from a two-week recess.
It is unclear how long Feinstein expects to be away from Washington or whether she might resign before the end of her term. She has already faced questions in recent years about her cognitive health and memory, and has appeared increasingly frail. But she has defended her effectiveness.
STALLED JUDGES
Since February, Feinstein has missed more than 50 votes. Her absence on the Judiciary Committee means that Democrats can only confirm judges who have some Republican support because Democrats only have a one-seat majority on the panel.
The committee chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has acknowledged that the pace of confirmations has slowed.
“I can’t consider nominees in these circumstances because a tie vote is a losing vote in committee,” Durbin told CNN.
There are currently 12 federal judge nominees whom Democrats say they have been unable to advance because of Feinstein’s absence. It is not clear how many would have Republican support.
AN UNUSUAL REQUEST
Feinstein’s request to be temporarily replaced on the panel is uncommon and the politics at play are complicated.
Committee assignments are typically approved easily in the full Senate at the beginning of each two-year session. Replacements are generally only made when a senator dies or resigns.
To change the committee membership, Democrats will have to hold a vote. While committee rosters are generally approved by a voice vote, just one Republican objection would trigger a roll call. Because of Senate rules, Democrats probably would need 60 votes to replace Feinstein — meaning at least 10 Republicans would have to help Democrats and support the move.
That is far from assured. Judicial nominations are a high-stakes matter for both sides, and the process has become steeped in partisanship.
Republicans have so far stayed quiet. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has said he will return from his own medical absence on Monday, after a head injury in a fall last month.
CALIFORNIA POLITICS
Feinstein’s February announcement that she will retire from Congress when her term ends next year has triggered a scramble for her seat in a strongly Democratic state.
Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff have already launched Senate campaigns to succeed Feinstein.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in 2021 that he would nominate a Black woman to fill the seat if Feinstein were to step aside before her term ends. Khanna has endorsed Lee, who is Black.
Other Californians — including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — have come to Feinstein’s defense.
Pelosi told a San Francisco TV station that she’s “seen up close and firsthand her great leadership for our country, but especially for our state of California. She deserves the respect to get well and be back on duty.”
Pelosi suggested sexism has played a role in the way Feinstein has been treated.
“I don’t know what political agendas are at work that are going after Sen. Feinstein in that way,” Pelosi said. “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way.”
A STORIED CAREER
Feinstein has been a political trailblazer since she was the first woman to serve as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the 1970s. First elected to the Senate in 1992, she was the first woman to head the Senate Intelligence Committee, privy to the nation’s top secrets, and the first woman to serve as the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat.
While she often has worked across party lines, she faced criticism in recent years from Democrats who said she was letting Republicans off easy in bruising judicial fights.
Feinstein infuriated liberals in 2020 when she closed out confirmation hearings for now-Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett with an embrace of the then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and thanked him for a job well done.
A month later, she announced she would remain on the committee but step down as the senior Democrat.
#Why Sen. Feinstein's absence is a big problem for Democrats#diane feinstein#senate#us senate#term limits
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A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
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A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58c1d07fe4b0ed71826b55e0,571e58fae4b0d912d5ff48d0,58a33ddce4b094a129ef5e22
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
0 notes
Text
A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58c1d07fe4b0ed71826b55e0,571e58fae4b0d912d5ff48d0,58a33ddce4b094a129ef5e22
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
0 notes
Text
A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58c1d07fe4b0ed71826b55e0,571e58fae4b0d912d5ff48d0,58a33ddce4b094a129ef5e22
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
0 notes
Text
A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58c1d07fe4b0ed71826b55e0,571e58fae4b0d912d5ff48d0,58a33ddce4b094a129ef5e22
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
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A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58c1d07fe4b0ed71826b55e0,571e58fae4b0d912d5ff48d0,58a33ddce4b094a129ef5e22
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
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Text
A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58c1d07fe4b0ed71826b55e0,571e58fae4b0d912d5ff48d0,58a33ddce4b094a129ef5e22
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
0 notes
Text
A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58c1d07fe4b0ed71826b55e0,571e58fae4b0d912d5ff48d0,58a33ddce4b094a129ef5e22
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
0 notes
Text
A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related... + articlesList=58c1d07fe4b0ed71826b55e0,571e58fae4b0d912d5ff48d0,58a33ddce4b094a129ef5e22
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rmXrgr
0 notes
Text
A New Bill Would Protect Immigrant Farmworkers. It Has Little Chance Of Survival.
For many months now, farmworkers’ anxieties have been growing.
Following President Donald Trump’s promise last fall to imprison or deport or some 3 million undocumented immigrants from this country, many of the nation’s farmworkers — an estimated half of whom are undocumented — fear that this enforcement push will target them and their families.
Some of those farmworkers may have left, while others have inched further into the shadows. Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union that represents farmworkers, says he’s hearing a lot of reports of the latter. And he believes it is even putting farmworkers’ health at risk.
Last month, almost 50 farmworkers were exposed to a controversial pesticide that made them ill — reportedly vomiting and experiencing nausea — at an orchard in Kern County, California. Before anyone arrived to check on the workers, Rodriguez says, about half of the workers had left the worksite. He believes they did so because they were afraid they might encounter immigration officials while reporting their illnesses.
“I suspect they left because of the fact that they were fearful someone might find out that they may not have documents. They didn’t want to take that risk,” Rodriguez told HuffPost. “This creates more than fear. People don’t want to report anything to authorities.”
The political climate, he believes, is making an already vulnerable population that is integral to the American food system even more vulnerable.
But Rodriguez sees hope in new legislation, introduced last month, that would offer a temporary legal status — and a path to a green card — to undocumented farmworkers.
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and in the House by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), would offer a so-called “blue card” to farmworkers who have been working in the nation’s fields for at least two years and can pass a “thorough” background check.
The legislation isn’t exactly new. A similar proposal was sponsored by Feinstein and Rep. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as part of the broader “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill advanced in the Senate in 2013, though the bill was blocked by then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the House.
Four years ago, the “blue card” plan had bipartisan support. To date, only other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors to the new bill, and reports suggest the bill has little hope of Republican support — or the president’s signature — without significant changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in Arizona, California and Colorado, is an influential industry leader and also served on the president’s agriculture advisory committee. He said he welcomed the bill’s introduction but stopped short of endorsing it because it doesn’t address the full issue.
“To have a bill come out of the Senate co-sponsored by only Democrats is not meant to be a bill that’s passed, but to be a bill that starts the conversation about the need we have to do something about our existing [agricultural] workforce,” Nassif told HuffPost. “That’s a positive.”
He said the legislation was incomplete when compared to the broader “Gang of Eight” bill, which also included a proposal for an agricultural guestworker visa program.
“We’ve got to complete an agreement that covers a lot of the things that are important to agriculture,” Nassif added. “I don’t think anything that is less than a complete agricultural [immigration reform] bill has any chance of surviving.”
Paul Schlegel, director of the energy and environment team at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest ag industry group, offered a similar take on the bill. Schlegel emphasized the need to address not only the industry’s current workforce, but also its future one.
“I don’t think the politics will allow that to move in the absence of broader legislation,” Schlegel added.
Neither Feinstein’s nor Gutierrez’s offices responded to requests for comment on the bill by publication time.
Meanwhile, both farmworker advocates and ag industry groups emphasize that the issue is pressing. Perhaps as a reflection of that, applications for H-2A “guest worker” visas from the Department of Labor surged 36 percent in the first three months of this year compared to the same time last year.
But industry leaders say the H-2A program is flawed — too expensive and paperwork-intensive — and cannot alone solve a serious labor shortage in the industry. Nassif called it “the worst labor shortage” he’s seen over the course of his long career.
“Why the legislature has so little regard for what’s happening in production agriculture, especially those of us who use a lot of manual laborers, I just don’t understand it,” Nassif said. “We’re sending jobs abroad and importing more foreign food. There’s absolutely no upside to this.”
Labor shortages can mean a big financial hit for farmers — farmers in Georgia last year reported six-digit losses they blamed on delayed processing of their H-2A visa requests. Crops rotted in the field while some farmers waited for their workers to arrive.
For his part, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, is more concerned with the reports of immigration raids that are already affecting farmworkers and their communities, families and supporters. In March, reports emerged of the ICE arrest of apple pickers in western New York and a separate arrest of farmworker advocates in Vermont.
Goldstein emphasized his support for the blue card legislation, which he believes will not only put many farmworkers’ anxieties to ease, but also would help provide a stable workforce for their employers.
“There’s a serious threat of enforcement and that instills fear in the farmworkers and their employers,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just a number of arrests or deportations. It’s the presence of ICE agents in so many rural communities throughout the country. That presence is being noticed.”
Though he recognizes that chances for a more comprehensive immigration reform package seem dim in Washington, he is hopeful that Republicans in Congress will come around on addressing this one aspect of the bigger problem.
“This is an urgently needed, reasonable response to the reality that the majority of farmworkers in this country are undocumented and that agriculture would be tremendously harmed if any significant number of them were deported.”
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