Speech #990156024

Mr. Speaker. I rise today to call to my colleagues attention several important issues regarding the current debate over the guestworker provisions of pending immigration reform legislation. Mr. Speaker. my opposition to guestworker programs stems from my personal experience as a migrant worker in the late forties and the early fifties. At that time. my family and I worked side by side with the braceros and the illegals in the fields and before we knew it the work was over. There just was not enough work available for us. Things havent changed much since then. In my district the unemployment rate for migrant workers is very high at about 34 percent and in many areas in the district the general unemployment rate is nearly 20 percent. While I feel for these foreign laborers. it is clear that we have a sufficient source of agricultural workers right in the United States which we should employ. Mr. Speaker. guestworker programs do not work. Many experts. including the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. have concluded that these programs increase illegal migration and agricultural employers dependence on foreign labor. Provisions for massive guestworker programs. therefore. violate the principal goals of immigration reform legislation. If the purpose of immigration legislation is to limit unfair competition for domestic jobs. then importing hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers is entirely inconsistent with that goal. These programs exact another. much more human toll. They inevitably lead to massive abuse and exploitation. This has been well documented in our experience with the bracero program and today we continue to see abuse of guestworkers and domestic farm laborers in Florida and other areas. Our country has reaped too many harvests of shame to forget the bracero tragedies. As many of my colleagues know. the immigration bill passed last year in the other body contains a massive new guestworker program. The Wilson amendment to S. 1200 would allow growers to import as many as 350.000 guestworkers at any given time. In addition. the bill includes two other temporary worker programs for agriculture: the "transition" program. and a "streamlined" H2 Program which would significantly increase the number of H2 workers allowed into the United States each year.