[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 125 (Friday, September 29, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10505-S10507]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AGRICULTURAL WORKERS
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, we have an opportunity today with the
border fence bill and with the concurrence of Members of this body to
help an industry that right now is in deep trouble, and that industry
is American agriculture.
The reason it is in deep trouble is because it does not have the
workforce to harvest the crops. This is true whether it is Florida, the
State of Washington, Iowa, Idaho, California, Arizona, or any other
agricultural State. The reason for the shortage of workers is because
agriculture dominantly depends on what is an undocumented or illegal
workforce. The reason that is the case is because it has been found
over the years that American workers simply will not do this work.
Therefore, agriculture, the huge industry that we have in America, has
come to depend on an undocumented workforce.
Just to give one example--and I wish I had a big chart--but this is
the pear crop in Lake County, a farm owned by Toni Scully, and these
mounds are rotting pears on the field because they cannot be harvested
in time.
California is the largest agricultural State in the Nation. It is a
$34 billion industry. It has 76,500 farms. California produces one-half
of all of the Nation's fruits, vegetables, and nuts from only 3 percent
of the Nation's farmland. If these products cannot be harvested--and it
is late in the harvest season today--the price of fresh produce all
over this Nation is going to rise.
We have an opportunity to do something about it. I am joined on the
floor by Senator Larry Craig of the State of Idaho who is the main
author of the AgJOBS Program. In the Judiciary Committee in the
immigration bill, we revised AgJOBS and it was part of the Senate-
passed immigration bill. Along with AgJOBS, we have reformed the
agricultural guest worker program called H-2A. These two programs
combine to give the farmers of America the certitude they need that
there will, in fact, be a workforce able to harvest their crops, plant
their crops, prune, cut, pack, and sort crops in this great country.
In my State we have roughly 350 different crops: lemons, tomatoes,
raisins, lettuce, prunes, onions, cotton, and many others that are
grown all across the State. Growers are reporting that their harvest
crews are 10 to 20 percent of what they were previously. It is a
disaster, and it will be a very costly disaster for the farm community
as well as for the consumers of America. And it can be solved. We could
move today to put the AgJOBS bill on the border fence bill. We all
recognize it isn't germane postcloture, but the body could agree to
include it because of the emergency circumstances that exist in
agriculture States throughout the Nation today.
In my State we employ at least 450,000 people in the peak of the
harvest, with farm workers progressing from one crop to the next,
stringing together as much as 7 months of work. The estimate is that
the season is falling short by 70,000 workers.
It is a very serious situation. Fields in Pajaro Valley in Santa Cruz
County are being abandoned. Farmers can't find workers to harvest
strawberry, raspberry, and vegetable crops. In the Pajaro Valley, one
farmer reports he has been forced to tear out 30 acres of vegetables.
He has about 100 acres compromised by weeds because there is nobody to
weed the field. He estimates his loss so far to be $200,000. California
and Arizona farmers say they need 77,000 workers during December to May
to harvest vegetables, and they estimate the shortage will be 35,000
workers.
It is amazing to me that we can't do something about this by passing
a bill that has been heard in the Judiciary Committee, that has been
amended, that has been discussed over a period of years.
I would ask, if I might, the Senator from Idaho a series of
questions, through the Chair. The first question is how long the
Senator from Idaho has been working on the AgJOBS bill?
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator asking the
question. I began to work with American agriculture and specifically
western growers in the Pacific Northwest and in the Senator's State of
California starting in about 1999 when they came to me and recognized,
as they now clearly know, that they were beginning to rely on an
illegal workforce of undocumented workers who were coming in because
the law that exists, the H-2A, was so complicated and so bureaucratic,
it was simply failing them. So it has been now at least 7 years that we
have worked to comprise and build the AgJOBS legislation.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, if I may, through the Chair, is there
a crisis in the State of Idaho?
Mr. CRAIG. There is a growing crisis in the State of Idaho. I would
like, if the Senator from California doesn't mind, to submit for the
Record a ``Dear Colleague'' letter that the Senator from California and
I sent out late this month. It speaks of California and Idaho and
Washington and Oregon. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in
the Record.
[[Page S10506]]
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC, September 22, 2006.
Dear Colleague: Earlier this week, we went to the floor to
highlight the desperate need for agricultural workers. In our
colloquy, we discussed how American farmers are suffering,
not because they don't have the crops and inventory, but
because they don't have the workers to bring their crops to
the market.
In fact, just this morning, a New York Times front page
story proclaimed ``Pickers Are Few, and Growers Blame
Congress.'' (copy attached) To be honest, we agree with their
sentiment.
Farmers across this country have every reason to be angry
and frustrated. There is simply no reason AgJOBS has not been
enacted, and no reason it could not be passed now. The New
York Times article is just one of dozens that have been
written this summer highlighting the plight our farmers are
facing.
California is the single largest agriculture state in the
nation with over $34 billion in annual revenue and
approximately 76,500 farms. And this year, growers in
California are reporting that their harvesting crews are 10
to 20 percent of what they were previously. As the Times
reported, ``California farms employ at least 450,000 people
at the peak of the harvest, with farm workers progressing
from one crop to the next, stringing together as much as
seven months of work. Growers estimate the state fell short
this harvest season by 70,000 workers.'' The impact is
devastating ``fields go untended, and acres have to be torn
up because there is no one to harvest them.'' (San Jose
Mercury News 8/9/06)
Agricultural labor shortages affect not just California; in
fact, they are impacting farms across the country, including
harvesting of citrus in Florida, apples in New Hampshire,
strawberries in Washington, and cherries in Oregon. In
Wyoming, it has been reported that the labor shortage played
a central role in the imminent closure of the $8 million Wind
River Mushroom farm. The Idaho Department of Commerce and
Labor reports that the number of farm workers in Idaho is
down by 18 percent, and the Potato Growers of Idaho believes
``appropriate legislation, such as AgJOBS, is needed to keep
the industry growing.'' (PGI news release, 9/12/06)
According to Cox News Service, ``One farmer in Cowlitz
County in Washington state reported one-third of his
blueberry crop rotted in the field for want of enough
pickers,'' and a farmer in Oregon complained ``farmworkers
should have been harvesting 25 tons of fruit per day from
his Polk County cherry orchard. Instead, he could only
hire enough temporary farmworkers to pick 6 tons.''
Most shocking, the American Farm Bureau has found ``that if
Congress enacts legislation that deals only with border
security and enforcement, the impact on fruit and vegetable
farmers nationwide would be between $5 billion and $9 billion
annually. Net farm income in the rest of the agricultural
sectors would decline between $1.5 billion and $5 billion a
year.''
Yet this is a problem we know how to solve, and can solve
with your help. We have both introduced the AgJOBS bill as an
amendment to the border fence bill now before the Senate. The
AgJOBS program, previously passed by the Senate, is a
bipartisan solution that would create a pilot program to
allow certain longtime, trusted agricultural workers to
legalize their immigration status in the United States while
at the same time fixing the H2A visa program so farmers
needing new temporary workers can bring them into this
country through legal channels.
The time is long overdue to help American farmers get the
labor they need. The opportunity is before us, and we must
not turn our backs on this real problem that could be fixed
with the enactment of the AgJOBS legislation. We urge you to
support our efforts to get AgJOBS added to the border fence
legislation and help American farmers get the assistance they
need to bring their crops to market.
Sincerely,
Dianne Feinstein,
U.S. Senator.
Larry Craig,
U.S. Senator.
____
[From the New York Times, Sept. 22, 2006]
Pickers Are Few, and Growers Blame Congress
(By Julia Preston)
Lakeport, CA--The pear growers here in Lake County waited
decades for a crop of shapely fruit like the one that adorned
their orchards last month.
``I felt like I went to heaven,'' said Nick Ivicevich,
recalling the perfection of his most abundant crop in 45
years of tending trees.
Now harvest time has passed and tons of pears have ripened
to mush on their branches, while the ground of Mr.
Ivicevich's orchard reeks with rotting fruit. He and other
growers in Lake County, about 90 miles north of San
Francisco, could not find enough pickers.
Stepped-up border enforcement kept many illegal Mexican
migrant workers out of California this year, farmers and
labor contractors said, putting new strains on the state's
shrinking seasonal farm labor force.
Labor shortages have also been reported by apple growers in
Washington and upstate New York. Growers have gone from
frustrated to furious with Congress, which has all but given
up on passing legislation this year to create an agricultural
guest-worker program.
Last week, 300 growers representing every major
agricultural state rallied on the front lawn of the Capitol
carrying baskets of fruit to express their ire.
This year's shortages are compounding a flight from the
fields by Mexican workers already in the United States. As it
has become harder to get into this country, many illegal
immigrants have been reluctant to return to Mexico in the
off-season. Remaining here year-round, they have gravitated
toward more stable jobs.
``When you're having to pay housing costs, it's very
difficult to survive and wait for the next agricultural
season to come around,'' said Jack King, head of national
affairs for the California Farm Bureau Federation.
California farms employ at least 450,000 people at the peak
of the harvest, with farm workers progressing from one crop
to the next, stringing together as much as seven months of
work. Growers estimate the state fell short this harvest
season by 70,000 workers. Joe Bautista, a labor contractor
from Stockton who brings crews to Lake County, said about
one-third of his regular workers stayed home in Mexico
this year, while others were caught by the Border Patrol
trying to enter the United States.
With fewer workers, Mr. Bautista fell behind in harvests
near Sacramento and arrived weeks late in Lake County.
``There was a lot of pressure on the contractors,'' he said.
``But there is only so much we can do. There wasn't enough
labor.''
For years, economists say, California farmers have been
losing their pickers to less strenuous, more stable and
sometimes higher-paying jobs in construction, landscaping and
tourism.
``If you want another low-wage job, you can work in a hotel
and not die in the heat,'' said Marc Grossman, the spokesman
for the United Farm Workers of America. The union calculates
that up to 15 percent of California's farm labor force leaves
agriculture each year.
As they sum up this season's losses, estimated to be at
least $10 million for California pear farmers alone, growers
in the state mainly blame Republican lawmakers in Washington
for stalling immigration legislation that would have
addressed the shortage by authorizing a guest-worker program
for agriculture. Many growers, a dependably Republican group,
said they felt betrayed.
``After a while, you get done being sad and start being
really angry,'' said Toni Scully, a lifelong Republican whose
family owns a pear-packing operation in Lake County. ``The
Republicans have given us a lot of lip service, and our crops
are hanging on the trees rotting.''
Tons more pears that were harvested were rejected by Mrs.
Scully's packing plant because they were picked too late. The
rejects were dumped in a farm lot, mounds of pungent fruit
swarming with bees, left to be eaten by deer. ``The anthem
about the fruited plain,'' Mrs. Scully said sadly, ``I don't
think this is what they had in mind.''
Some economists and advocates for farm workers say the
labor shortages would ease if farmers would pay more. Lake
County growers said that pickers' pay was not low--up to $150
a day--and that they had been ready to pay even more to save
their crops. ``I would have raised my wages,'' said Steve
Winant, a pear grower whose 14-acre orchard is still laden
with overripe fruit. ``But there weren't any people to pay.''
The tightening of the border with Mexico, begun more than a
decade ago but reinforced since May with the deployment of
6,000 National Guard troops, has forced California growers
to acknowledge that most of their workers are illegal
Mexican migrants. The U.F.W. estimates that more than 90
percent of the state's farm workers are illegal.
Most California growers gave up years ago on recruiting
workers through the seasonal guest-worker program currently
in place. Known as H-2A, the program requires employers to
prove they tried to find American workers and to apply well
in advance for relatively small contingents of foreign
workers for fixed time periods.
``Our experience with the current H-2A program has been a
nightmare,'' said Luawanna Hallstrom, general manager of
Harry Singh & Sons, a vine-ripe tomato grower based in
Oceanside, near San Diego.
Ms. Hallstrom said her company tried to use the program in
the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, when security checks
forced it to fire illegal migrant employees who were working
in tomato fields on a military base. Her company lost $2.5
million on that 2001 crop, she said.
Over the years, occasional programs to draw American
workers to the harvests have failed. ``Americans do not raise
their children to be farm workers,'' Ms. Hallstrom said.
The failure of Congress to approve a new guest-worker
program surprised California growers because a proposal that
the Senate passed stemmed from a rare agreement between
growers' organizations, the U.F.W. and other advocates for
farm workers, and legislators ranging from conservative
Republicans to liberal Democrats.
Known as AgJobs, the proposal would create a new temporary-
resident status for seasonal farm workers and give them the
[[Page S10507]]
chance to become permanent residents if they work intensively
in agriculture for at least three years. It was included in a
bill that passed the Senate in May. The House has passed
several bills focused on border security, and has avoided
negotiations with the Senate on a broader immigration
overhaul. [Three of the House bills were passed Thursday.]
Mr. Ivicevich, a 69-year-old family farmer, is not given to
displays of emotion. But he paused for a moment, overwhelmed,
as he stood among trees sagging with pears that oozed when he
squeezed them. His nighttime sleep, in his cottage among his
122 acres of orchards, is disrupted by the thud of dropping
fruit and the cracking of branches.
For decades, Mr. Ivicevich said, migrant pickers would
knock on his door asking for work climbing his picking
ladders. Then about five years ago they stopped knocking, and
he turned to a labor contractor to muster harvest crews. This
year, elated, he called the contractor in early August. Pears
must be picked green and quickly packed and chilled, or they
go soft in shipping.
``Then I called and I called and I called,'' Mr. Ivicevich
said.
The picking crew, which he needed on Aug. 12, arrived two
weeks late and 15 workers short. He lost about 1.8 million
pounds of pears.
His neighbor, Mr. Winant, standing in his drooping orchard
with his hands sunk in his jeans pockets, said he would
rather bulldoze the pear trees than start preparing them for
a new season.
``It's like a death, like a son died,'' said Mr. Winant,
45, who cares for the small orchard himself during the
winter. ``You work all year and then see your work go to
ground. I want to pull them out because of the agony. It's
just too hard to take.''
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, clearly what is happening--and the Senator
has said it so well--is this a failure of American agriculture or is
this a failure of Congress? It is clearly a failure of Congress and the
Government.
We have known our borders are porous for a long time, and we are
closing them now, and we should close them. There is nothing wrong with
doing that. In fact, for national security and to build an orderly
process in immigration, it is critical that we do close them or control
them. But we also knew that immediately attached to it had to be the
creation of a legal guest worker program. That is where Congress is
failing. We believe and in the letter we submitted the losses by the
end of the harvest season could go anywhere from $1 billion--and they
are well beyond that now--to $5 billion or $6 billion at farm gate,
meaning as it leaves the farm, which means to the consumer in the
supermarkets of America, it will be a much higher price to pay.
I thank the Senator for asking the question.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his response.
The fact is we have a pilot program that is part of the immigration
bill that would provide over a 5-year period 1.5 million undocumented
workers the opportunity to become documented, and provided they do
agricultural work for a period of time, over time, to earn a green
card. In discussing this with some Members they said they would agree
if it were a temporary program. Well, it is a temporary program,
because it sunsets in 5 years. I believe, and the Senator from Idaho
will correct me if I am wrong, we would be prepared to change that
sunset from 5 years to 2 years, or a time that would bring about
concurrence from the Members.
But the point is there is a crisis out there. The point is we can
solve that crisis now with this legislation. And the point is it is not
new legislation. It has been authored, debated, discussed, heard now
over a 6-year period. It has been refined. Both Senator Craig and I are
convinced it will work. It was part of the immigration bill.
So what we are asking this body to do is essentially suspend the rule
and allow this program to go into law at this time so the remainder of
the harvest season and, more importantly, the planting season for
winter vegetables and crops can be handled. If we do not do this, we
will go well into next year without the agricultural labor present to
sustain an agricultural industry in America in an adequate way, and the
costs will be enormous.
I think somebody around here should begin to think of the consumer. I
don't want to say to California families they are going to go in and
buy heads of lettuce at $4 a head or more or broccoli at $5 a head or
anything else because of a dramatic shortage, because farmers won't
plant, because farmers can't pick, because farmers can't harvest, they
can't sort, they can't pack, they can't can. That labor is needed, and
year after year it has been documented that Americans will not do this
kind of difficult, hot, stooped labor.
So this is an opportunity. It is an opportunity for us to respond to
an industry of which we are all proud, and an industry which is in deep
trouble at the present time.
Let me go on with a few other examples. I mentioned that California
and Arizona farmers say they need 77,000 workers during the December to
May to harvest, and they estimate they may be 35,000 workers short. The
estimates from my State are that illegal immigrants make up at least
one-fourth of the workforce and as high as 90 percent of the farm labor
payroll. It is also estimated that for every agricultural job lost, we
lose three to four other related jobs. I am told that in the Senator's
State, farm workers are down 18 percent, and the potato growers of
Idaho want AgJOBS passed to keep the industry growing.
In the State of Washington, in Cowlitz County, one-third of one
farmer's blueberry crop rotted in the field because there were no
pickers. Apple growers in the central part of the State were scrambling
to find someone--anyone--to do the work of thinning the apple crop.
Also in Washington, production at Bell Buoy Crab in Chinook, Pacific
County is down 50 percent since April.
In Florida, Citrus Mutual notes: ``There is very little doubt we will
leave a significant amount of fruit on the tree.'' Orange production in
the State has been predicted to be the lowest since 1992 if the worst
projections are realized. Six million boxes of oranges may well go
unharvested in Florida this year because of a shortage of fruit
pickers.
In Wyoming, they face the imminent closure of the $8 million Wind
River Mushroom farm.
And in Oregon, farm workers should be harvesting 25 tons of fruit per
day from the Polk County cherry orchards.
This is some indication. We have a bill, and that bill would provide
the opportunity for an undocumented worker who has worked in
agriculture for a substantial period of time--there are two different
formulas in the bill--to go in to register, to pay a fine, to show
their tax returns, to agree to pay taxes in the future, to get a
temporary work card called a blue card, which would be biometric so
that that worker is identified; it would eliminate fraud, and it would
enable that worker, if they continue to work in agriculture for a
period of years, to then gain a green card. It is a sound program. It
will give farmers certainty. They will know there is an agricultural
workforce, and it will involve people already in this country who are
skilled, who are professional at farm work.
I don't know what it takes to show that there is an emergency. I
think next year we would be ready, willing, and able to do this, but we
will have lost another agricultural season, we will have lost a spring
season, a summer season. I hope that someone will listen, that the
leadership of this body will allow us, and I will call up--well, I
can't do it now, but at an appropriate time I will call up the
amendment that is at the desk.
I thank the Chair.
Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I ask to speak for 7 minutes as in morning
business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for 7 minutes.
Mr. DeMINT. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. DeMINT related to the introduction of S. 3995 are
printed in today's Record under ``Statements On Introduced Bills and
Joint Resolutions.'')
____________________