The Senate was racing to complete action before the Memorial Day recess on a bill that includes a critical amendment designed to give growers access to the workforce they need to keep crops in the pipeline.

Late last night, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) went to the floor and used a parliamentary procedure that caused Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) Emergency Agriculture Relief Act (EARA) to be stripped from the 2008 Emergency Supplemental Funding bill. Menendez said the reason he stripped the amendment was because the measure "didn't do enough to help immigrants."

"SAF appreciates members who contacted their senators in support of the EARA, but there is no need to write your senators at the present time," says Jeanne Ramsay, senior director of government relations for SAF.

EARA is a five-year temporary program that aims to stabilize the agricultural workforce. It overhauls the existing H-2A worker program and allows experienced farm workers to earn temporary status if they pay a fine, undergo a background check, and commit to future service performing farm labor. It does not offer a path to citizenship.

"It's an emergency," Feinstein said of the farm worker situation in last week's San Francisco Chronicle. "If you can't get people to prune, to plant, to pick, to pack, you can't run a farm."

Feinstein's amendment was supported by agricultural producers and farm worker advocates. Without the amendment, growers and producers may have to scale back or move production offshore.

While addressing the most urgent needs of growers, the limited timeframe and scope of the EARA would have continued to encourage the development of comprehensive immigration reform.

Stay tuned for further developments.

--Morgan Schimminger
mschimminger@safnow.org

  

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