Speaker. this House earlier this session wisely chose to reject a 2year extension of the Bracero Act. Public Law 78. I should hope that we will continue to reject any extension of this act which by injecting a large supply of cheap labor into the American agricultural market prevents the wages of domestic migrant workers from rising through the market forces of supply and demand. Proponents of Public Law 78 have not only claimed a great insufficiency of domestic labor for agricultural stoop labor. thereby justifying in their eyes the bracero program. they have also cited reasons why wages of the workers should be deplorably low. Mr. Matt Triggs. assistant legislative director for the American Farm Bureau Federation. based his argument for low migrant worker wages on their low productivity when he testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor on April 24. He argued for allowing free economic forces to improve the lot of the migrant workers. and claimed that wages will not rise in such a free market until the productivity of the migrants increases. First might I ask: Why does he artificially alter free market forces by introducing a cheap foreign labor force? And second.
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