Howard Berman: “the arguments we just heard in this Chamber are the same arguments that were given to justify slavery before the Civil…”

“the arguments we just heard in this Chamber are the same arguments that were given to justify slavery before the Civil War. If we could find American, or in that case, free people, to do the work, we would not need to rely on slaves. Let me tell you, this is the most audacious amendment I could imagine on this bill, because this is an amendment that in the name and in the context of trying to do something meaningful about illegal immigration, creates a program which is going to result in the most massive entry of guest workers who every economist in agriculture will tell you are one-way immigrants. The overstay rate, even in the highly, tightly regulated H-2A program is six times as high, six times as high, as the overstay rate for tourists, students or people here on other nonimmigrant visas. You are opening up a blatant, massive loophole in a serious effort to try and do something about illegal immigration. And what for? Rather than figuring out the ways to the reform of the welfare system, through the utilization of the 1.1 million agricultural workers legalized in 1987, through the recruitment, the training, the effort, private and public, to help agriculture get more U.S. workers doing this particular work. The unemployment rates in these counties are astoundingly high. There is a massive surplus. The Department of Labor says at any given time, 190,000 agricultural workers are unemployed, 12 percent unemployment rates at the peak season in agriculture.”