Session #98 · 1983–85

Speech #980210579

Let me tell the gentleman the sad experience in our State. I am entitled to some time and I will give the gentleman some time. Last year there were some apple growers in a certain part of this country that needed some migrant workers to pick apples. They made a deal with some people in Mexico to bring over about 150 or 200 workers. All of a sudden. here I am sitting with a 25 percent unemployment rate in my district and my migrant laborers are sitting there not doing anything. asking me. "Why is it that you allow"-now. this is me. the Congressman-"why is it that you allow people to come in from Mexico to pick apples in the United States when we are sitting here begging for work? So I said. "Thats a pretty good idea." so I get hold of the Labor Department and they tell me that they are going to investigate. Well. to make a long story short. it hinged on whether or not the growers would pay for their transportation. They said. "No. we will not pay for transportation for domestic people and we have not offered to pay the people from Mexico transportation." Well. now. the gentleman in the well and I know differently. They could not possibly have come up all the way from Mexico to take the job without having somebody pay their transportation. Now. these are some of the things that I am going to be looking at in the gentlemans amendment and any other amendment to make sure that our people. our American migrants. get first crack at all these jobs before any certification that there is no local labor available and on the very same terms. that they treat ours on the very same terms that they treat any guest worker. If the gentleman will give me assurance that his bill does this. it will go a long way to alleviating my mind on this particulak point.
Keywords matched
migrants migrant

Classification

Target group
Sentiment
Mixed
Stereotyping
No
Confidence
95%
Model
gemini-2.0-flash
Framing
Economic threat Legal / procedural

Speaker & context

Speaker
ABRAHAM KAZEN
Party
D
Chamber
H
State
TX
Gender
M
Date
1984-06-12
Speech ID
980210579
Paragraph
#0
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