I believe our legislation will help achieve that goal. Mr. President. let me briefly summarize the improvements our bill makes over the current H2A program. First and foremost. all of the labor protections currently in place for workers have been preserved. In fact. they have been improved substantially. Domestic workers under the new program will now receive unemployment insurance and all complaints filed by workers will be investigated by the Department of Labor. Also. foreign workers under the new program will retain their ability to transfer to other H2A farms once theyve completed work with their current employer. These provisions will ensure that the rights of workersboth foreign and domesticcontinue to be protected. Weve also improved the housing provision in the existing H2A program. currently another barrier for many farmers. For instance. in my state of Oregon. our strict land use laws prohibit building on farm land. This means that many farms do not have housing to offer and therefore cannot use the H2A program. Under our new bill. we allow employers the option of providing a housing allowance to workers If housing cannot be provided. This change will make it possible for many more farmers to use the guest worker program. and guest workers will still receive housing benefits. To be fair to domestic workers. we also created a process that would make agriculture jobs available to them first. The bureaucratic and untimely labor certification process of the H2A program will be replaced by a registry which uses existing DOL job bank computers to match domestic workers seeking jobs with employers seeking workers. If job openings still exist. then employers will be allowed to bring in temporary foreign workers to fill the open jobs. In order for employers to offer these and other protections. the program has to be more practical to use. In our bill. we have streamlined the impractical timeframe requirements for applying to the program. Currently. farmers must apply for H2A workers 60 days before they think they will need workers. In a very unpredictable industry. this requirement is a barrier for many farmers. In our bill. we have reduced this time period to 21 days. making the program much more responsive to the unpredictable nature of agriculture crops and much more practical for use by farmers. Our legislation makes many other improvements to the existing H2A programfor both employers and workers. As a result. we can expect more growers to use it. and consequently. we can expect more domestic and foreign workers to benefit from the ample wage and labor protections afforded by it. Lets not make fugitives out of farmworkers and felons out of farmers.