Typically the debate over immigration doesn't always involve agriculture. But the Senate Judiciary Committee this week held a hearing on just that topic -- how immigration issues affect agriculture.
The attention was on the Farm Workforce Modernization Act (FWMA), with the use of H-2A visas one of the key areas for U.S. ag companies when it comes to bringing in immigrant workers.
Under the FWMA, there would be five-year visas to undocumented farm workers who meet specific eligibility criteria. But they would also be provided with a pathway to permanent legal status and that became one of the key issues that Republican lawmakers focused on in the session.
USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack told lawmakers that they needed to support the FWMA. The bill, he said, marked a "very delicate compromise" which the House approved earlier this year.
Vilsack, a seasoned official in terms of testifying before Congress, turned the questions on lawmakers themselves. That doesn't always happen. But Vilsack pressed Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., on how it could be viewed as amnesty. He specifically noted that he did not see how it could be amnesty "when the bill provides for the payment of a fine of $1,000, I don't quite understand why we're talking about amnesty." Kennedy's simply said, "Because it is amnesty, and I think most Americans see it as amnesty, and I see it as amnesty."
But Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, likened it to a 1986 immigration reform effort that included an amnesty provision, noting that under that law many agricultural workers that obtained legal status ended up leaving the sector, eventually forcing employers to bring in more illegal immigrants. "The cycle simply began once again," he noted.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said extending citizenship to even one worker under the farmworker bill would result in "a run on the border." Vilsack countered that farmworkers would only qualify for citizenship when they had been in the country for a while.
Graham called the idea of passing the farmworker legislation "ass-backwards," saying that the U.S. needs to be addressed first.
But some of the liveliest activity came when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, held the questioning time for Vilsack. He took issue with Vilsack's assertion that if the economic conditions in the countries where immigrants typically have come were addressed, there would not be the flow of those trying to enter the U.S.
But Cruz was not having it, noting that those were in poverty last year when the immigration rates were low. "Mr. Secretary, if we were having a hearing on the optimum fertilizer for growing corn, I think you might be a very good witness," Cruz said. "And with all due respect your answers on immigration were fertilizer."
And the U.S. agriculture sector is not unified behind the FWMA. The American Farm Bureau Federation opposes the FWMA in part because they say it would make it easier for employees to sue producers. Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall sent a letter to the committee saying, "Congress must recognize the dangers of incomplete, shortsighted agricultural labor reform initiatives" and urging broad-based reform of the H-2A program."
The bottom line from the hearing is what has kept the issue of immigration from being addressed by the U.S. government: There is not a unified view that will gain support from enough lawmakers to make it through Congress.
So we will see. Agriculture and immigrant labor is very linked and this is something that needs to be watched closely as effort continue to try and find that still-elusive ground to get immigration reform through, Washington Insider believes.