Zoe Lofgren: “Our country has come through a pandemic, and many of us have suffered, but there is one thing that we can be grateful…”

“Our country has come through a pandemic, and many of us have suffered, but there is one thing that we can be grateful for, and that is that the food chain was never disrupted. Throughout the pandemic, we could go to the grocery store and there would be food in that store. For that, we need to thank the farmers of this country. But we also need to thank the farmworkers of this country, a majority of whom are undocumented and a majority of whom have been here more than 10 years. What this bill does and how it was formed is important. I want to thank Representatives Dan Newhouse, Mike Simpson, Doug LaMalfa, and many others on the Republican side of the aisle. I worked with Jim Costa, Jimmy Panetta, and many others to try to see if we could come together to come up with solutions for the challenges that we face in farm country. We pulled together growers and the farmworkers union to talk together for solutions. It took us almost a year of growers and the farmworkers union, and Republicans and Democrats, sitting around a table to come up with this bill. It has basically three provisions. The first recognizes that we have had undocumented farmworkers in our fields for decades. It allows them to get a certified agricultural worker card so that they can work without fear. That is a temporary worker status. They can renew it, travel, pay taxes, and continue forever in that status.…”