Angie Craig: “the last Congress worked long and hard to resolve one of the most contentious issues of our time: immigration. As many…”

“the last Congress worked long and hard to resolve one of the most contentious issues of our time: immigration. As many of our colleagues know, while a number of border enforcement measures were enacted, we did not complete all the critical elements of a comprehensive strategy on immigration reform. Yesterday, I joined with Senators Feinstein, Kennedy, Martinez, Voinovich, and Boxer in reintroducing legislation to address a very important piece of that unfinished business: the establishment of a workable, secure, effective temporary worker program to match willing foreign workers with jobs that Americans are unwilling or unable to perform. Our legislation is specific to U.S. agriculture because this economic sector, more than any other, has become dependent for its existence on the labor of immigrants who are here without legal documentation. The only program currently in place to respond to a lack of legal domestic agricultural workers, the H-2A guest worker program, is profoundly broken. Outside of H-2A, farm employers have no effective, reliable assurance that their employees are legal. The bill we reintroduced is called AgJOBS--the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act.”