Session #104 · 1995–97

Speech #1040203616

Mr. President. I would like to thank Senator SIMPSON and Senator KENNEDY for working with me and my cosponsors to craft a bipartisan amendment to commission a GAO study on the effectiveness of the H2A Guest Worker Program. It seems to me that the H2A Program works for no one. From what I have heard from growers and from farmworker advocates on this program: First. it does not effectively match up American workers with employers who need labor. second. it is administratively unwieldy for growers. potentially leaving them at the date of harvest without sufficient labor. and third. there are cases where the labor protections under the program have been poorly enforced and some growers have driven out domestic laborers in favor of foreign labor through unfair employment practices. It seems to me that this program can use a good. hard look on a number of fronts. and this is why I am proposing a GAO report so that an outside agency can take a balanced look at the effectiveness of this program.
Keywords matched
H2A

Classification

Target group
Also mentioned
American workers
Sentiment
Negative
Stereotyping
No
Confidence
100%
Model
gemini-2.0-flash
Framing
Economic contributor Legal / procedural

Speaker & context

Speaker
RON WYDEN
Party
D
Chamber
S
State
OR
Gender
M
Date
1996-04-29
Speech ID
1040203616
Paragraph
#0
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