Xavier Becerra: “Mr. Chairman, we are in a situation where we just finished a day and a half worth of debate, where we were talking about…”

“Mr. Chairman, we are in a situation where we just finished a day and a half worth of debate, where we were talking about eliminating about 300,000 visas for U.S. citizens to be able to bring in their family members, their parents, their children, their brothers, their sisters. Now we are dealing with an amendment that says, ``Let us bring in 250,000 imported foreign workers to do work in our fields.'' Mr. Chairman, probably the worst part about this amendment is the following: In 1992, the rural unemployment rate in the United States was 11 percent. It was even higher for young people working in rural areas. It was close to 19 percent. A substantial number of those that are employed in rural areas, about 40 percent, earned wages below the poverty threshold for a family of four. Real wages for rural workers have declined between 1979 and 1992 by over $1 an hour. The rural unemployment rate is even more pronounced in those areas and in those counties with high concentrations of migrant and seasonal agricultural workers, the same kind of people that we want to import from other countries. Even during the peak months of agricultural labor demand, we still see very high rates of unemployment.”