UFW: ‘The only genuine solution to a serious problem’
United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez issued the following statement from the union’s Keene, Calif. headquarters following passage late Monday by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee of a comprehensive immigration reform measure including an amendment by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) that reflects the AgJobs bill negotiated by the UFW and the nation’s agricultural industry.
We commend the Judiciary Committee’s adoption of Sen. Feinstein’s thoughtful amendment reforming the existing H-2A agricultural guest worker program to ensure it meets the seasonal needs of growers and granting committed farm workers who pass national security and criminal background checks the right to earn legal status by continuing to work in agriculture.
Sen. Feinstein’s amendment reflects AgJobs (S. 359), bipartisan legislation negotiated by the United Farm Workers and the nation’s agricultural industry that is cosponsored by 48 senators from both parties and is endorsed by a broad array of more than 500 organizations.
Between one-half and three-quarters of U. S. farm workers are undocumented today. As new enforcement measures are instituted to ensure criminals and terrorists are rightly excluded from the country, both legal and undocumented farm workers are increasingly cut off from their livelihood. Cutting off undocumented farm workers from their jobs or deporting those in this nation now would cause the collapse of American agriculture as we know it. If that happens, Americans will no longer be able to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables—or at least many of them produced in America.
The status quo is unacceptable. Those interested in a genuine solution to a serious problem will not find it in the House bill passed late last year or in stand-alone guest worker proposals that only guarantee workers deportation after they obey all the rules. Very few undocumented workers will expose themselves to authorities to participate in such guest worker plans; they are simply irrelevant.
The only genuine solution to a serious problem is combining enforcement and national security concerns with allowing undocumented farm workers who here now earn the right to stay by continuing to perform work crucial to the survival of vital U.S. economic sectors. The UFW remains committed to seeing that solution become law.
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