update on AgJOBS - your help needed

[Guest guest]

AgJOBS Update - March 29, 2006 -- The

Farmworker Justice Fund, Inc.

Farmworkers achieved an important

victory with the inclusion of AgJOBS in the immigration bill approved by

a bipartisan majority in the Senate Judiciary on March 27, 2006.

But the fight to pass AgJOBS is not over and no one can predict the

outcome.

The Senate has begun debating

immigration reform on the Senate floor starting with Senate Majority

Leader Frist's (R-Tenn.) immigration enforcement and border control

bill. Senator Specter (R-Penn.) is expected to offer the Judiciary

Committee immigration bill as a substitute to Frist's bill. Both

bills will be debated on the floor. Both bills will likely face

threatened filibusters and need 60 votes of support to proceed.

Before that happens, however, Senators will be offering amendments to

change one or both of the immigration bills.

Senator Chambliss (R-Ga.), who has

introduced a one-sided, anti-worker immigration bill making changes to

the H-2A agricultural guestworker program, issued a statement proclaiming

his extreme disappointment with the vote on AgJOBS in the Judiciary

Committee. Senator Isakson (R-Ga.) also introduced an immigration

bill that, while focused on border security, seeks to reward growers with

cheap foreign labor by slashing wage rates in the H-2A agricultural

guestworker program. Both Sen. Chambliss and Isakson are likely to

offer their proposals as amendments on the Senate floor. Their

policies, if adopted, would allow growers to exploit the vulnerable

guestworkers and prevent agricultural wage rates from improving.

Their proposals are not only unfair but ahistorical. They would

abolish a wage protection that was created under the Bracero program to

try to limit the exploitation of the hundreds of thousands of Mexican

guestworkers in agriculture at that time. Farmworkers need your help

defeating these proposals and supporting the H-2A wage changes and other

aspects of the AgJOBS compromise.

What can you do to help

farmworkers?

1. Most

importantly, please contact your Senators to ask them to support AgJOBS

and oppose any amendments not supported by the bill's primary sponsors

(Senators Craig, Kennedy and Feinstein), such as the one-sided and harsh

Chambliss agricultural worker proposal and the Isakson H-2A wage-slashing

provisions. Contact information for all Senators can be found at

<

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

> .

2.

Please contact Senator Feinstein to thank her for reaching agreement with

Senators Craig and Kennedy and for her leadership in offering the AgJOBS

amendment to the Senate Judiciary Committee immigration bill. She

is apparently receiving a number of anti-immigrant calls and needs to

hear that we appreciate her support. Her office number in

Washington, DC is (202) 224-3841.

3.

Please contact the other Senate Judiciary Committee members who voted in

favor of AgJOBS to thank them for their support and to ask for their

continued support of AgJOBS by opposing all amendments not supported by

the bill's primary sponsors (Senators Craig, Kennedy and Feinstein). The

contact information for those Senators is as follows:

Delaware: Senator Biden - (202)

224-5042

Illinois: Senator Durbin - (202)

224-2152

Kansas: Senator Brownback - (202)

224-6521

Massachusetts: Senator Kennedy -

(202) 224-4543

New York: Senator Schumer -

202-224-6542

Ohio: Senator DeWine - (202)

224-2315

Pennsylvania: Senator Specter - (202)

224-4254

Vermont: Senator Leahy - (202)

224-4242

Wisconsin: Senator Feingold - (202)

224-5323 and Senator Kohl -(202) 224-5653

Attached to this alert, please find 3

bulletins explaining the status of AgJOBS, describing the modified AgJOBS

proposal, and describing Senator Isakson's and Senator Chambliss's goal

of slashing H-2A wage rates and making other H-2A changes to provide a

small group of agricultural employers with cheap, exploitable foreign

labor.

Please contact Adrienne DerVartanian

at the Farmworker Justice Fund with any questions.

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Adrienne DerVartanian

Staff Attorney/Policy Analyst

Farmworker Justice Fund, Inc.

1010 Vermont Ave., NW, Suite

915

Washington, DC 20005

Tel. (202) 783-2628, ext. 204

Fax (202) 783-2561

www.fwjustice.org

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