Howard Berman: “Our real difference is you say 17,000 guest workers, half a million illegal immigrants working in our fields. Got to do…”

“Our real difference is you say 17,000 guest workers, half a million illegal immigrants working in our fields. Got to do something. I say we legalized 1.1 million agricultural workers in 1986. We have double-digit unemployment in almost every rural county in America, astronomical unemployment in the areas that most want this, Western agriculture, and what we need to do is the government working with agriculture, welfare reform, going back to the people who left the fields and who know how to pick. This is honorable work. There are Americans who will do this work if they do not have alternatives, and if there is decent pay and good working conditions. This should be our focus, not trying to figure out how to do this guest worker thing where they really do not go back. I mean, huge numbers we lose. That is the problem. I think that should be our focus.”