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UFW, Latinos, Wilcox: Sen. Kyl shares blame for AZ farm labor shortage crisis

UFW, Latinos, Wilcox: Sen. Kyl shares blame for AZ farm labor shortage crisis

 
By opposing a broad-based bipartisan immigration reform bill last April letting undocumented farm laborers legally work in the U.S. and streamlining the existing agricultural guest worker program, GOP Sen. Jon Kyl helped block a practical solution to the labor shortage now facing Arizona growers during this year’s fall and winter vegetable harvest. “Sen. Kyl put narrow partisanship ahead of working in the interests of his state,” United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez will declare at a 10:30 a.m. news conference Friday in Phoenix.

On April 19, 2005 the full Senate voted on the historic AgJobs bill (S. 359), jointly negotiated by the UFW and the nation’s agricultural industry and endorsed by more than 500 organizations. AgJobs would give undocumented farm workers already in this country the legal right to work here and make the existing H-2A guest worker program easier and faster for growers to use.

AgJobs was the first major immigration reform measure in nearly 20 years to win majority support in either house of Congress. It garnered 53 votes, still short of the 60-vote supermajority required to break a filibuster. A number of other senators are now committed to voting for AgJobs.

“Instead of joining Arizona’s senior senator, John McCain, in voting for AgJobs, Sen. Kyl voted ‘no’ and joined Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in introducing a competing proposal that was so unfair and one-sided that it was defeated 77-21,” the UFW’s Rodriguez says. “Sen. Kyl’s measure didn’t even win support from half the Republicans.” The Kyl-Chambliss plan was soundly rejected because it would not have allowed undocumented farm workers to earn legal status and didn’t include protections for workers that are in the AgJobs bill.

Under AgJobs, undocumented farm workers whose permanent homes are in Mexico and who pass national security and criminal background checks could cross the U.S.-Mexico border without molestation to labor on Arizona farms. “AgJobs would help solve the labor problem now facing Arizona agriculture and Sen. Kyl could have helped make it the law,” Rodriguez says.

Who: UFW President Arturo Rodriguez, county Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, area Latino leaders.

What: News conference blaming Sen. Jon Kyl for blocking a solution to the farm labor shortage.

When: 10:30 a.m., Friday, Nov. 4, 2005.

Where: El Portal Restaurant, 117 West Grant, Phoenix (phone: 602-271-0521).

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