Posted on 05/18/2005 7:12:59 AM PDT by LNewman
Feinstein targets agricultural workers. Senator plans to introduce an industry-specific bill, rather than a sweeping measure on immigration.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday that she ... plans to introduce her own measure to provide a path toward legalization only for longtime undocumented agriculture workers.
Feinstein, D-Calif., said any new guest-worker program – even one requiring employees to eventually return to their home country – would be a "magnet for illegal immigration" and something she could not support.
SNIP
Under Feinstein's idea, which hasn't yet been finalized, longtime undocumented agricultural workers would get a "blue card," allowing them to continue to work in agriculture. After a period of years of continued agricultural work, they would be entitled to trade in their blue card for a "green card."
Feinstein's comments came in an interview after the immigration and terrorism subcommittees held a hearing Tuesday afternoon on the border-security implications of immigration policy.
SNIP
At the hearing, Asa Hutchinson, a former undersecretary of homeland security, urged the panel to first put workable border security and workplace enforcement systems in place and then consider a guest-worker program.
A prerequisite for a new worker program, Hutchinson said, must be the need to "satisfy the American public that we are capable of securing our borders."
And Hutchinson said people in other countries have to believe they will have a two- thirds chance of being caught if they attempt to enter the United States illegally, a deterrent that is not the case now.
And, Hutchinson said, they have to believe they will be detained.
SNIP
Feinstein did suggest at the hearing that senators look into raising the number of immigrants who can come into the country legally each year.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
For many years it appeared the wine industry was on its way to total mechanization of the harvest. Then the INS stopped it's raids (which used to drive the wineries and grape growers nuts). Now picking machines are few and far between. The excuse for their non use is that they BRUISE the grapes and the invading foreign national pickers are so much kinder to the vines!!
In the 80s they raided firms in the San Fernando valley on a regular basis, some at the time that we were doing conswtruction work on.
They loaded by vans and buses on a daily basis with them in Oceanside.
They rode the train from Oceanside to San Clemente and tie wrapped them for a bus trip back to Mexico.
They loaded them up on a daily basis at Lindburg that tried to go north by airline.
There weren't any illegals working in construction, at least in commercial until after 87.
You didn't notice it in Orange County back then since most didn't get that far.
Don't know about the tie-wrapping, but I've been on trains out of San Diego when they were stopped. Guy in my car had his nose buried in a newspaper when they tapped him on the shoulder and escorted him off.
Mechanization works in other countries (ie Australia). They don't seem to need a massive influx of illegals. This whole thing is about voting blocks.
I'm not sure you can say "most" Californians don't want stoop labor for the agriculture section of their economy. Agriculture is very important to the state's economy and you can't do it all with machines.
There are even a lot of conservatives who ordinarily are against illegal immigration who understand that there has to be some kind of guest worker program. BUT you don't need to give them citizenship.
Which explains the odd alliance between blue collar unions and conservatives. They both oppose illegal immigration, but for different reasons.
Fienstein represents another sliver of opinion. Liberals who have to kowtow to farming interests (for election) and civil rights activists (for ideology).
Confusing isn't it?
Why do we need immigrants to take these jobs. There are plenty of inner city welfare recipients who are available.
"In 1917 and again in 1942, the US initiated guest labor programs, commonly known as the Bracero programs, that brought Mexican workers into the Southwest to work as non-citizen farm workers and fill an alleged labor shortage. Up to half a million workers were enrolled in the program at its height.
The flow of undocumented Mexicans grew during this time, prompting a government effort to stem the tide by "drying out the wetbacks"--an effort to convert undocumented immigrants into Braceros. When that failed, "Operation Wetback" was launched with the deployment of a military style border patrol. The Bracero programs effectively exposed thousands of poor Mexicans to the wealth of the United States and contributed to immigration pressure. It also displaced Chicanos from rural agricultural jobs, fueling their exodus to urban centers".
Other articles point out that poor black and white citizens were totally shut out of these jobs as well because the agriculture industry couldn't resist dropping wages for profit when they had a workforce powerless to object.
It's time to put an end to this corruption cycle and force mechanization.- NRT
Or all those illegals taking up space in US prisons?
It was fun to browse through their pages. Get a load of some of this crap, it's a hoot.
Political Research Associates
http://www.publiceye.org/about.html
Challenging Right-Wing Attacks on Human Rights
The political Right often capitalizes on today's hectic information flow by offering clever slogans that oversimplify complex public policy issues.Through skillful marketing the Right uses misleading terms such as "parental rights" and "personal responsibility" to oppose movements and organizations that promote tolerance and equality.
Heh heh, I'm not going lib by a long shot!
Type "Operation Wetback" into a search engine and see how many unbiased articles you can find. I usually do a better job but time is limited - looking for employment at a wage this Scottish soul wouldn't consider meager.
I know what you mean. I found this one by searching for "operation wetback" +eisenhower. I can't vouch for it's veracity, but here's one source that seems well-balanced.
Handbook of Texas Online: Operation Wetback
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/OO/pqo1.html
... looking for employment at a wage this Scottish soul wouldn't consider meager.
I make ends meet by rolling drunks and collecting aluminum cans. It's tax free income, too!
Good luck with the job search.
We don't need any more criminals here - California is loaded with them.
Read this link and learn what's happening to California because of illegal immigration:
http://www.fairus.org/Research/Research.cfm?ID=1563&c=9
It is being said that the Cornyn-Kyl reform bill will be the Bush Plan plus Kyl's border security/interior enforcement policies.
I am aware of that. Unlike the McCainnedy amnesty it will still be a work and return program. But it still does not punish either the illegal aliens or their employers for their many crimes so it is still a huge amnesty.
The link you posted is interesting. I saw some of the same material come out of Kyl's Republican leadership committee.
The document does a good job of identifying the cheap labor subsidy that taxpayers are forced to give businesses. I don't recall that the President's plan addressed this subsidy in any way. Businesses were not required to provide health care for the guest workers or their families. They were also not taxed in any way to help communities bear burdens like the cost of schools or hospitals. Just because these folks will now be legal does not mean that it will cost the taxpayers any less to provide them services.
Another deficiency that I recall with the President's plan is that it did nothing to protect the prevailing wage. If the going wage for US drywallers was $9.00 per hour, there was nothing stopping an employer from advertising every new job at minimum wage and since there was no limit on the number of guest workers that could be imported, an infinite supply of cheap labor virtually guarantees a race to the bottom on wages. And as I recall, there was no job categories that were exempted. There are lots of very well educated folks in India that would be happy to come here and take any supervisory, accounting, programming, technical job and work far cheaper than most middle-class Americans.
Unless these deficiencies are addressed, this plan will result in the destruction of the middle-class. I obviously don't favor it.
If you will recall, AgJobs included a $2/hr rise in the prevailing wage for H2A visa holders.
It remains to be seen how that subject will be dealt with in the final two bills.
~~trackback~~
What we'll "get over" is how it provides for you and yours.
"Unlike the McCainnedy amnesty it will still be a work and return program."
Im not so sure about that. It seems to me that each plan has a different process to arrive at very similar results.
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