Immigrant-worker reform plan stalled

WASHINGTON – Despite support from 63 senators, legislation has stalled to overhaul a program that allows farmers to have a stable legal immigrant work force.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, failed last week to attach the bill, called AgJobs, to another piece of legislation. National Hispanic groups say the Bush administration isn’t doing enough to support the legislation, and they’re pessimistic that it will pass this year.

The bill is the culmination of a decade of farmers’ and immigrant rights groups’ work to reform a program that few use now because of the red tape. The so-called H-2A farmworker visa program supplied only 3 percent of Idaho’s 35,331 farmworkers in 2002, according to state and federal records.

The government estimates that up to 70 percent of the nation’s 1.5 million farmworkers are in the country illegally.

“We have heard some talk (the Republicans) do not want to put any immigration bills before the president,” said Executive Director Maria Meier of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a group of 20 Democratic House members.

Calls placed Friday and Monday to the White House Press Office seeking comment were not returned.

The administration is neutral on the bill. However, President Bush in January called on Congress to pass immigration reform for all the nation’s illegal workers. Last week, he renewed that call in a speech to the League of United Latin American Citizens annual convention in San Antonio.

President Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative Washington think tank, said AgJobs would reward illegal immigrants now here. In addition to making the H-2A visa program easier for farmers to use, the bill would allow farmworkers to earn permanent status by continuing to work in agriculture for three to six years.