Speech #1040192322

Mr. Chairman. as a Committee on Agriculture member. I too have heard the concerns of agriculture employers who call the current H2A guest worker program unworkable and thus understand that my colleagues want to give the growers a program that works. I agree that growers need some relief and must be able to depend on a reliable source of foreign workers. But the PomboChambliss amendment takes the completely wrong approach. We should not create an entirely new. untested. massive guest worker program when we have a program already. Let us fix the H2A program instead. The PomboChambliss amendment creates an institutionalized program which could bring up to 250.000 aliens into our country per year. The Goodlatte compromise amendment is based on hearings held on the H2A program in both the Committee on Agriculture and Committee on the Judiciary. It will cap the number of visas available for H2A workers at 100.000. Seventeen thousand guest workers are currently coming into the United States under the H2A program. That allows for a very substantial increase. It pays for workers way home. it protects American workers by making sure that guest workers do not adversely affect wages and working conditions of American workers. and it will also require that growers actively recruit for U.S. workers before they can get guest workers. It lifts the burdensome regulations on growers. such as the 50 percent rule and the 34 guarantee. and cuts 33 percent off the application processing time for the H2A certification. Take a lesson from the history books. The Bracero Program was the beginning of our illegal immigration problem we are attempting to curb in H.R. 2202. Hundreds of thousands of braceros became accustomed to the American standard of living and wages. Once the Bracero Program ended. many braceros resorted to coming to this country illegally. That trend continues today. Supporters of the PomboChambliss amendment claim unless we create a massive new guest worker bureaucracy. the illegal immigration patterns begun with the Bracero Program will simply grow. How can it get any worse? National organizations representing the growers have on the record stated that at any given time. at least 50 percent of their work force is comprised of illegal aliens. If we enact the H2B program in the PomboChambliss amendment. we will simply take the inroad we have made in H.R. 2202 to cut illegal immigration and throw them away. This program will let in 250.000 unskilled foreign workers a year. That is four times the number of skilled workers we are going to admit. We are limiting the number of visas for family reunification. What is the point if we create this new program? This flies in the fact of evidence that there is now a great surplus of domestic farm workers.