Saxby Chambliss: “I heard the response to the presentation made relative to my amendment. It is interesting to note that a couple of…”

“I heard the response to the presentation made relative to my amendment. It is interesting to note that a couple of things were not responded to. First of all, as I said earlier, this amendment is pretty basic. It requires everybody involved in agriculture who gets on a pathway to citizenship to learn English. Apparently there is no disagreement with that, and this bill does not, in the present way it is written, require that. Apparently there is no disagreement to that. The Fair Labor Standards Act does say that 1 hour constitutes a workday. But the Fair Labor Standards Act applies to labor laws in the United States. It has nothing to do with the most cherished prize in the world, and that is the citizenship of the United States of America. Senator Craig is my friend, and I appreciate his hard work for the last 5 years or whatever it has been. I had my first vote on modifying H-2A in the House of Representatives 11 years ago. That is how long I have been working on this issue. When he says H-2A does not work, he is wrong. H-2A does work. But what this base bill does is it encourages farmers--and I emphasize this--it encourages farmers to hire illegal workers, and they are going to do that unless we give them the incentive to hire legal workers. The H-2A program will work if we continue to modify it and make it better, streamline it, and allow our farmers to have a quality pool of workers under H-2A. Mr.…”