William L. Clay: “I rise to oppose the Pombo-Chambliss amendment. This amendment seeks to establish a new agricultural guestworker…”

“I rise to oppose the Pombo-Chambliss amendment. This amendment seeks to establish a new agricultural guestworker program, not in place of the existing temporary agricultural worker program, but in addition to it. Recently, the bipartisan commission on immigration reform, chaired by our former colleague, the late Barbara Jordan, studied the issue of introducing a new agricultural guestworker program and reached an unambiguous conclusion. The Commission believes that an agricultural guestworker program, sometimes referred to as a revisiting of the ``bracero agreement,'' is not in the national interest and unanimously and strongly agrees that such a program would be a grievous mistake. The amendment before us would increase illegal immigration, reduce employment opportunities for U.S. citizens, and depress the wages and working conditions of U.S. farmworkers. The current H-2A program includes preferences for and protections of U.S. workers. This amendment substantially weakens those protections by providing an alternative means of bringing in foreign workers, regardless of whether a true labor shortage exists. Current law ensures that foreign workers are not brought into the United States for the purpose of undermining the wages and working standards of U.S. agricultural workers. The Pombo-Chambliss amendment would ensure that foreign workers will be brought in for just that purpose.”