On Friday, Sept. 30, a dozen members of the United Farm Workers visited the Camarillo, Calif. office of U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.) to protest the Republicans’ E-Verify measure that would make growers electronically verify the immigration status of farm workers. I’m also traveling to Washington, D.C. to testify against E-Verify. The federal government says more than half of U.S. farm workers are undocumented. Our union’s experience in many places where we are active is that frequently the overwhelming majority of farm workers are here without legal papers. So E-Verify, if implemented, would deny employers most of the farm labor work force.
But House Republicans, led by rabidly anti-immigrant tea partiers, are using E-verify to justify new guest worker programs that would import half a million new foreign farm workers–on top of all the undocumented farm workers already here. The United Farm Workers strongly opposes bills by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.). They would gut the modest protections for imported farm workers under the existing agricultural guest worker system, the H-2A program. This would result in lower pay and fewer protections for guest workers who are often abused because of poor enforcement under the current system. And since most of the undocumented workers who are here now would remain, these Republican bills would create a surplus supply of farm workers that would help the industry keep wages and benefits depressed, and fight unionization. The Republican push for E-Verify and their new guest worker schemes are unnecessary because there is an equitable and practical alternative before Congress: The bipartisan AgJobs bill negotiated by the UFW and the nation’s growers that would let undocumented farm workers here now earn the legal right to permanently stay in this country by continuing to work in agriculture.
Arturo S. Rodriguez, President
United Farm Workers of America