Below are our latest news on important news and events relating to policy changes and issues affecting farmworkers and their families.
A new report profiling American farmworkers and their stories dispels the myth that U.S. workers do not take jobs as farmworkers.
Who Works the Fields? The Stories of Americans Who Feed Us offers a sampling of stories from both U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents working on farms. Although a majority of farmworkers today are undocumented immigrants, there are hundreds of thousands of legally authorized U.S. workers in the agricultural labor force.
Please call the Members of Congress on the House Judiciary Committee, especially if they represent your district. The list is below. Tell them to OPPOSE the Goodlatte “Agricultural Guestworker Act,” H.R. 1773. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a “mark up” to debate, amend and probably vote on H.R. 1773. Rep. Goodlatte (R.-Va.) chairs the Judiciary Committee; his bill’s cosponsors include Rep. Gowdy (R-SC) chair of the immigration subcommittee.
This bill would establish a new H-2C agricultural guestworker program that would lower farmworkers’ wages, eliminate labor protections that have existed for decades under the H-2A and Bracero programs, minimize government oversight, allow displacement of US farmworkers and exploitation of vulnerable guestworkers, and deprive farmworkers of meaningful access to the justice system.
The bill would not allow undocumented farmworkers in the United States, or their family members, to earn green cards or the opportunity for citizenship. It does not fix our broken immigration system; it would make it far worse.
This anti-worker, anti-immigrant bill is inconsistent with the approach taken by the Senate “Gang of Eight” in the tough but acceptable labor-management compromise on agricultural workers in the bipartisan immigration proposal, S.744. Read the Farmworker Justice legislative analysis of the Goodlatte Agricultural Guestworker Act at our website page on Immigration Reform and Farmworkers.
You may reach them by calling the US Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.
Read full article for listing of Committee Members:
The Senate Judiciary Committee finished debating and amending the immigration bill drafted by the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight.” The Committee then voted to approve and send to the floor of the Senate the amended version of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S.744. Farmworker Justice President Bruce Goldstein issued the following statement:
Farmworker Justice
