Agriculture Labor Reform Is On The Horizon
March 6, 2013 
On Feb. 12, 2013, President Obama delivered his State of the Union address followed by Florida Senator Marco Rubio who gave the Republican response. They laid out very different visions and priorities, but one of their few areas of agreement was on the need to pass immigration reform.
What a difference a year and an election can make!
One year ago, mandatory E-Verify legislation was a real possibility, and Congress had no appetite to consider immigration issues beyond enforcement and “anti-amnesty” messages. USApple and other labor-intensive agricultural organizations, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, began meeting to fight enforcement-only bills such as mandatory E-Verify and to draft a new agriculture labor proposal. The goal: a new piece of legislation that all of agriculture could get behind. While we worked diligently to achieve this goal, realistically, everyone agreed it would likely be a long process to see a bill introduced and acted on.
Everything changed on Election Day 2012, as Republicans saw the impact of Hispanic voters on the election results. The day after the election, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s “single worst decision may have been to challenge Texas Governor Rick Perry in the primaries by running to his right on immigration.” The editorial concluded that “the GOP needs to leave its anti-immigration absolutists behind.”
With that, our labor coalition’s timeline moved up considerably, and we began having serious meetings with Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rubio, who agreed to be our Senate champions. In mid-January our organization, the Agriculture Workforce Coalition (AWC), was officially launched with a briefing for agriculture groups and a new website (www.agworkforcecoalition.org).
New Solution Needed
There is wide agreement that the AgJOBS legislation, which USApple championed for years, is no longer a viable solution since the H-2A program is simply too broken to offer any hope of long-term stability for growers. Instead, we are advocating for a new market-based Agricultural Worker Visa Program designed to ensure agriculture’s future legal workforce. The program would give employers greater flexibility and workers the ability to change jobs.
The apple industry and others in labor-intensive agriculture need a program that functions as efficiently as the current free market movement of migrant farm workers while providing the security of a contractual relationship in areas where there is little migration. In addition, there must be provisions to allow the current workforce to adjust their status and be allowed to stay in this country and continue working in agriculture.
The Senate is moving fast — a bipartisan group of eight Senators announced a broad list of principles in late January and a comprehensive immigration reform bill is expected to be introduced in March. USApple and our partners in the AWC are working with our Senate allies to ensure that the agriculture title of that bill reflects our principles and meets our needs.
In the House, a group of bipartisan Representatives are meeting regularly to develop a proposal of their own. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) has begun holding what promises to be a series of hearings on immigration issues. One likely sticking point in both the House and the Senate will be whether border security becomes a prerequisite for broader action. Many conservatives say they need assurances of border security before they will consider other reforms. Under the plan outlined in the Senate, the path to citizenship would only open up once a commission of border state officials certifies that the border is secure. However, many Democrats have since called the commission more of a formality not intended to hold up the process of granting citizenship to the undocumented.
At a Senate immigration reform hearing in mid-February, Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asserted, “There are still some stuck in the past who are repeating the demands of ‘enforcement first.’ I fear they mean ‘enforcement only.’ To them I say that you have stalled immigration reform for too long.” There is at least some bipartisan support for this sentiment, as Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) also indicated he does not want to see efforts derailed on the issue of border security. However, the more conservative House is likely to focus on enforcement first.
USApple and our partners in the AWC support strong border enforcement as long as it is coupled with meaningful reform. The argument can also be made that significant effort is already going into enforcement. A recently released study by the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute found that spending on immigration enforcement totaled $18 billion in FY2012, exceeding all other federal law enforcement spending combined.
By the time this article goes to press, a Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill will likely be introduced in the Senate, but there will still be much work to be done. Agriculture labor and immigration reform remains USApple’s top legislative priority and will be the focus of our March 22 Capitol Hill Day. Grassroots efforts will be needed and we will be calling on apple leaders and others in the industry to help make the case for reform with their elected officials. To find out how you can get involved, please contact me directly at [email protected].
Diane Kurrle is vice president for public affairs for the U.S. Apple Association in Vienna, VA.
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