Speech #1090119540

Bill Brim. a Georgia fruit and vegetable grower. assisted 130 workers adjust status pursuant to the Special Agricultural Worker Program. Not one single one of the 130 workers stayed on his farm for more than 6 months after they adjusted their status. Recognizing that these agricultural workers who are able to adjust their status will not be in agriculture forever. the Senate should be able to agree that we need a viable H2A program to address the labor needs of agriculture in the future. Unfortunately. the agricultural provision of the Judiciary Committees bill simply does not meet the needs of our Nations agribusiness. It is ironic to me that those who admittedly do not use the H2A program in their States purport to know the modifications necessary for improvement of the program. In reality. the language contained in the Judiciary Committees proposal provides every advantage to those agricultural employers who have been utilizing an illegal workforce and cripples those employers who have utilized the legal H2A program. For instance. the Judiciary Committees agricultural proposal treats all those currently illegal aliens who qualify for a blue card as U.S. workers for purposes of recruiting workers. This means an agricultural employer who has been utilizing the H2A program for years and following the rule of law already on the books will be forced to hire an illegal alien with a blue card before that farmer can petition to bring in the same people who had been working and returning in a legal manner for him in the H2A program for years. Further. in the case of an agricultural employer who properly applies for and brings H2A workers to work on his farm. that employer will be forced to replace that H2A worker for whom he has paid transportation costs to the worksite with a blue card worker who arrives at the worksite at any point during the first 50 percent of the work period seeking an agricultural job to fill his or her yearly hourly requirement to maintain their blue card status. Once again. we are going to be giving folks who are here illegally preferential treatment over those folks who are here legally. There is no common sense whatsoever to that proposal.