Oppose the new Bracero Program !

Take action to oppose Rep. Goodlatte’s expansion of the guest worker program

Update: The bill made it through committee !

AG VISA BILL ADVANCES: The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would create a new visa for agricultural businesses. The legislation, H.R. 4092 (115), sponsored by Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), squeaked by 17-16, confounding Morning Shift's expectation that opposition from Democrats and some Republicans would doom it. Two immigration hawks, Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), voted against the bill; five other Republicans abstained. 

"The bill would essentially scrap the H-2A visa and replace it with an H-2C program that would allow agricultural employers - such as meat processors, dairy farmers and loggers - with year-round work to apply," writes POLITICO's Sabrina Rodriguez. "The bill eliminates requirements that employers provide workers with transportation and housing, and it exempts workers from Fair Labor Standards Act compliance." Next stop is the House floor, where it faces steep odds. A similar measure passed out of committee in 2013 but was never taken up.

A more practical option for businesses could be the existing H-2A visa, which is available for temporary, seasonal agricultural work. Growers have increased their dependence on the visas in recent years: Labor Department H-2A certifications grew 63 percent in fiscal years 2013-2016. And H-2A visas may soon become available to a broader range of businesses. In September, the House passed a spending package, H.R. 3354 (115) , that included a rider to make the program available to year-round agriculture businesses (the same meat processors, dairy farmers and loggers mentioned above). The Senate hasn't marked up its bill yet.

The prospect of easier access to H-2A guestworkers worries Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. "The H-2A program could radically change in purpose and size without ever being debated in either the House or Senate Judiciary Committees, which are responsible for crafting immigration legislation," he wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. Read more from POLITICO's Rodriguez here and Costa here.

Rep. Goodlatte has announced he will introduce the “Agricultural Guestworker Act” in the Judiciary Committee for markup Tuesday, October 24. This bill creates a modern day Bracero program and would undermine the wages and working conditions of all agricultural workers. This bill comes at the same time that other members of Congress are trying to use the appropriations process to expand the scope of the current H-2A program in a way that will harm both US and immigrant workers.

Help the United Farm Workers and a broad coalition of almost 150 groups oppose this bill. Instead of taking agriculture back to the 1940’s, join us in asking Congress to refocus on the one thing that could stabilize agriculture quickly -- providing farm workers already laboring in the US with a path to lawful permanent residency and eventual citizenship.

The unwise expansion of the H-2A program and the creation of a new guestworker program would result in the displacement of US agricultural workers. Neither would protect the farm workers who do some of the most difficult work in America. Instead they would import guestworkers who have even fewer labor and political rights.

The efforts by Congressman Goodlatte to replace the H-2A program with a new agricultural visa system will create even more unfairness and dysfunction in our already broken immigration system. Even worse, it would deprive US citizens and lawful permanent residents of job opportunities. It does this by weakening the laws that requires US citizens and legal residents to be offered these jobs first. The bill expands access to guestworkers for even more employers, such as those in year-round processing. It would also lower farm workers’ already poor wages and allow exploitative conditions for hundreds of thousands of new guestworkers.

Oppose a new Bracero Program

Ta

Take action @ http://action.ufw.org/h2a1017 Rep. Goodlatte has just introduced the “Agricultural Guestworker Act” in the Judiciary Committee. This bill creates a modern day Bracero program and would undermine the wages and working conditions of all agricultural workers. This bill comes at the same time that other members of Congress are trying to use the appropriations process to expand the scope of the current H-2A program in a way that will harm both US and immigrant workers. Help the United Farm Workers and a broad coalition of almost 150 groups oppose this bill. Instead of taking agriculture back to the 1940’s, join us in asking Congress to refocus on the one thing that could stabilize agriculture quickly -- providing farm workers already laboring in the US with a path to lawful permanent residency and eventual citizenship. The unwise expansion of the H-2A program and the creation of a new guestworker program would result in the displacement of US agricultural workers. Neither would protect the farm workers who do some of the most difficult work in America. Instead they would import guestworkers who have even fewer labor and political rights.

One Day, My father didn't come home.

The Dark, Complex History of Trump's Model for His Mass Deportation Plan


Kate Linthicum November 13, 2015

Los Angeles Times


According to historian Mai Ngai, "the project was conceived and executed as though it was a military operation," with 800 immigration agents fanning out across the Southwest, apprehending as many as 3,000 immigrants a day at roadblocks and in raids on homes, farms and factories. Front-page Los Angeles Times headlines from that time touted the operation in demeaning language. "Wetbacks Herded at Nogales Camp," reads one.









Former U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres was 3 when his father was sent back to Mexico under a mass deportation program of the kind touted by Donald Trump as a model. Torres never saw his father again. , Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times,


Esteban Torres was 3 years old when his father was sent back to Mexico by U.S. immigration authorities.

"One day, my father didn't come home," remembers Torres, who lived with his family in a mining camp in Arizona at the time. "My brother and I were left without a father. We never saw him again."


Torres, 85, who went on to become a congressman representing the Pico Rivera area, was part of a generation of people whose lives were changed dramatically by large-scale deportation campaigns during the 1930s, '40s and '50s in which millions of Mexican nationals were rounded up and sent across the border on buses, trains and ships.

During Tuesday night's Republican debate, Donald Trump hailed one of those campaigns — the Eisenhower administration effort known by the outdated, racist name Operation Wetback — as a model for the "deportation force" he says he would deploy to swiftly remove the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. without legal status.


"They moved 1.5 million out," Trump said, responding to rivals who said his plan would not work. "Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president, people liked him," achieved it, he said.

The record, however, portrays a darker and more complicated picture, suggesting that a mass deportation effort many times larger than any conducted before would be much harder than Trump indicates.

A New Bracero Program Will Hurt Farmworkers

David Bacon
Most media coverage of immigration today accepts as fact claims by growers that they can't get enough workers to harvest crops. Agribusiness wants a new guest worker program, and complaints of a labor shortage are their justification for it. But a little investigation of the actual unemployment rate in farmworker communities leads to a different picture.

There are always local variations in crops, and the number of workers  needed to pick them. But the labor shortage picture is largely a  fiction. I've spent over a decade traveling through California valleys and I have yet to see fruit rotting because of a lack of  labor to pick it. I have seen some pretty miserable conditions for workers, though.

As the nation debates changes in our immigration laws, we need a  reality check. There is no question that the demographics of farm labor are changing. Today many more workers migrate from small towns in southern Mexico and even Central America than ever before. In the  grape rows and citrus trees, you're as likely to hear Mixtec or  Purepecha or Triqui - indigenous languages that predate Columbus - as  you are to hear Spanish.

What Real Immigration Reform Would Look Like

WHAT REAL IMMIGRATION REFORM WOULD LOOK LIKE
Clue:  It's Not a New Guest Worker Program
By David Bacon
The Progressive web edition, 7/27/13
http://www.progressive.org/real-immigration-reform



Oralia Maceda asks her question at the Fresno meeting.

Oralia Maceda, an immigrant mother from Oaxaca, asked the obvious last weekend in Fresno.  At a meeting, talking about the Senate immigration reform bill, she wanted to know why Senators would spend almost $50 billion on more border walls, yet show no interest in why people leave home to cross them.

This Congressional blindness will get worse as immigration reform moves to the House.  It condemns U.S. immigration policy to a kind of punitive venality, making rational political decisions virtually impossible.  Yet alternatives are often proposed by migrant communities themselves, and reflect a better understanding of global economics and human rights. 

Rufino Dominguez, who now works for the Oaxacan state government, describes what Maceda knows from experience: "NAFTA forced the price of corn so low it's not economically possible to plant a crop anymore.  We come to the U.S. to work because there's no alternative."  The reason for the fall in prices, according to Timothy Wise of the Global Development and Environment Institute, is that corn imports to Mexico from the U.S. rose from 2,014,000 to 10,330,000 tons from 1992 to 2008. 

H2A- Close to Slavery

by Chaz Bolte

Those who wish to expand the current system of bringing temporary workers to the United States via guest worker programs might want to heed the warnings of The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and their new report, “Close To Slavery.” The report documents the abuses experienced by workers in this flawed system, something former House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rengel called “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”

THE PROGRAMS
Two of the most used types of guest worker visas are the H-2A for agricultural workers and H-2B for non-agricultural workers.  Both systems have deep flaws that lead to a pattern of abuse though some regulations have been put in place to prevent abuse of the H-2A. These include a “three-quarters guarantee” ensuring workers will get to work at least three-quarters of the hours stated in their contract, prevailing wages determined by the DOL, and reimbursement of expenses.
H-2A workers also are legally entitled to:
• Receive at least three-fourths of the total hours promised in the contract, which states the period of employment promised (the “three-quarters guarantee”);
• Receive free housing in good condition and meals or access to a cooking facility for the period of the contract;
• Receive workers’ compensation benefits for medical costs and payment for lost time from work and for any permanent injury;
• Be reimbursed for the cost of travel from the worker’s home to the job as soon as the worker finishes 50% of the contract period. The expenses include the cost of an airline or bus ticket and food during the trip. If the guestworker stays on the job until the end of the contract or is terminated without cause, the employer must pay transportationand subsistence costs for returning home;
• Be protected by the same health and safety regulations as other workers; and
• Be eligible for federally funded legal services for matters related to their employment as H-2A workers.17

The Dignity Campaign's Alternative for Immigration Reform

THE DIGNITY CAMPAIGN'S ALTERNATIVE VISION FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM

By David Bacon

OAKLAND, CA  (2/6/13)

The Nation - web edition

http://www.thenation.com/article/172711/dignity-campaigns-alternative-vision-immigration-reform

        For some immigrant rights organizations, President Obama's principles for comprehensive immigration reform sound very familiar.  "The idea of the three-part tradeoff, that is, that we get some legalization in trade for guest worker programs and increased immigration enforcement, has been around for a long time," says Lillian Galedo, executive director of Filipino Advocates for Justice in the San Francisco Bay Area.  "We need a new alternative, based on much more progressive ideas.  I don't think the Dignity Campaign is the only alternative, but it's an effort to get us to talk about what we actually want, not just what politicians in Washington DC tell us is politically possible or necessary."
  The Dignity Campaign is a loose network of over 40 immigrant rights and community organizations, unions and churches that has crafted an immigration reform proposal "based on human and labor rights."    (Full disclosure: I am an active supporter of the Dignity Campaign.)   But it is more than a network and a particular proposal.  It is an alternative to the political strategy behind the tradeoff.  And the campaign's member organizations support it because of what they call the bitter impact of earlier tradeoffs over the last 30 years.
    In Tucson, Arizona, the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos calls comprehensive immigration reform, the shorthand name for the tradeoff strategy, "primarily a vague promise used to attract immigrant and Latino voters, [while] border communities have suffered the costs of irresponsible and brutal enforcement-only policies, resulting in death and violence."  A recent study found the federal government spends more today on border and immigration enforcement than on all other law enforcement agencies combined. 

Indentured servants in the U.S.: braceros

Indentured Servants in America

By Bob Herbert

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/opinion/12herbert.html
New York Times March 12, 2007

A must-read for anyone who favors an expansion of guest
worker programs in the U.S. is a stunning new report
from the Southern Poverty Law Center that details the
widespread abuse of highly vulnerable, poverty-stricken
workers in programs that already exist.

The report is titled 'Close to Slavery: Guestworker
Programs in the United States.' It will be formally
released today at a press conference in Washington.

Workers recruited from Mexico, South America, Asia and
elsewhere to work in American hotels and in such labor-
intensive industries as forestry, seafood processing
and construction are often ruthlessly exploited.

They are routinely cheated out of their wages, which
are low to begin with. They are bound like indentured
servants to the middlemen and employers who arrange
their work tours in the U.S. And they are virtual
hostages of the American companies that employ them.

The law does not allow these 'guests' to change jobs
while they're here. If a particular employer is
unscrupulous, as is very often the case, the worker has
little or no recourse.

One of the guest workers profiled in the report was a
psychology student recruited in the Dominican Republic
to work at a hotel in New Orleans in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. The woman had taken on $4,000 in
debt to cover 'fees' and other expenses that were
required for her to get a desk job that paid $6 an
hour.

But after a month, her hours were steadily reduced
until she was working only 15 or 20 hours a week. That
left her with barely enough money to survive, and with
no way of paying off her crushing debt.

The woman and her fellow guest workers had hardly
enough money for food. 'We would just buy Chinese food
because it was the cheapest,' she said. 'We would buy
one plate a day and share it between two or three
people.' She told the authors of the report: 'I felt
like an animal without claws - defenseless. It is the
same as slavery.'

Steven Greenhouse of The Times recently reported on a
waiter from Indonesia who took on $6,000 in debt to
become a guest worker. He arrived in North Carolina
expecting to do farm work but found that there was no
job for him at all.

The report focused primarily on the 120,000 foreign
workers who are allowed into the U.S. each year to work
on farms or at other low-skilled jobs. In most cases
the guest workers take on a heavy debt load to
participate in the program, anywhere from $500 to more
than $10,000. Worried about the welfare of their
families back home, and with the huge debt hanging over
their heads, the workers are most often docile, even in
the face of the most egregious treatment.

The result, said the report, is that they are
'systematically exploited and abused.'

Some of the worst abuses occur in the forestry
industry. The report said, 'Virtually every forestry
company that the Southern Poverty Law Center has
encountered provides workers with pay stubs showing
that they have worked substantially fewer hours than
they actually worked.'

A favorite (and extremely cruel) tactic of employers is
the seizure of guest workers' identity documents, such
as passports and Social Security cards. That leaves the
workers incredibly vulnerable.

'Numerous employers have refused to return these
documents even when the worker simply wanted to return
to his home country,' the report said. 'The Southern
Poverty Law Center also has encountered numerous
incidents where employers destroyed passports or visas
in order to convert workers into undocumented status.'

Without their papers the workers live in abject fear of
encountering the authorities, who will treat them as
illegals. They are completely at the mercy of the
employers.

President Bush has been relentless in his push to
greatly expand guest worker programs as part of his
effort to revise the nation's immigration laws. To
expand these programs without looking closely at the
gruesome abuses already taking place would be both
tragic and ridiculous.

'This is not a situation where there are just a few
bad-apple employers,' said Mary Bauer, director of the
Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law
Center, which has initiated a number of lawsuits on
behalf of abused workers. 'Our experience is that it's
the very structure of the program that lends itself to
abuse.'

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

________________________

MAPA and immigration

Mexican American Political Association
March 02, 2007

NCLR’s Embrace of Bracero-type Program a Trojan Horse
_
“Is this indentured alien – an almost perfect model of the economic man, an ‘input factor’ stripped of the political and social attributes that liberal democracy likes to ascribe to all human beings ideally – is this bracero the prototype of the production man of the future?” – asked Ernesto Galarza, the legendary author, labor organizer, community leader, and founder of the National Council of La Raza in his seminal work, “Merchants of Labor” in 1964, wherein he described the managed migration of Mexican farm workers in California from 1942 to 1963.
Fast forward to the current national debate around federal immigration reform and we encounter Galarza’s creation, NCLR, morphed into a naked apologist for that sector of corporate America, which is clamoring for modern-day braceros – and not solely reserved for agriculture. But, then again, it probably couldn’t have been otherwise. NCLR has been marketed by American big business as the “largest Hispanic civil rights organization in the U.S.” – a figment of a not too sophisticated marketing strategy, but almost entirely funded and subsidized by the Wal- Marts of the U.S. corporate landscape.

There is nothing in the distant or recent history of similar contract-worker programs in the U.S. that would inspire confidence in any of the current proposals for what NCLR’s CEO, Janet Murguia, has called a “new worker program.” She recently declared in an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post on February 11, 2007, that her “organization and many Latino leaders find ourselves in the interesting position of being principal advocates for a significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration reform.” Yet, she fails to identify what other “Latino leaders” advocate such a position, or organization that has a track record of advocating for and representing immigrant workers, or immigrant leaders and organizations. She couldn’t because there are none. In the same piece, Murguia lays out the historical experience of bracero programs as “dreadful,” “infamous,” and “synonymous with worker abuse,” yet goes on to advocate for a modern version of the program – an incredible summersault of logic.

We should remember that this is the same organization in the early 1990s – in the name of the Latino community - that was a vociferous supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has resulted in the loss of millions of American jobs, and the displacement of no less than three million Mexican small farmers from their lands, notwithstanding the opposition by labor and community-based organizations on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border during those debates. This is relevant because it goes to the question of whose interests are served by NCLR’s position on a new bracero program, and whose interests are prejudiced. Simply put, who wins and who loses?

NCLR has no history, trajectory, or reputation for serving individual immigrants in the problems that they encounter in America. It has no first-hand experience in case management in filing wage claims or addressing the systematic violations of the terms and conditions of existing contract-labor programs – H-2A and H-2B, for example. It has no stomach for litigating endemic injustices committed by employers who rob the contract laborers of the value that they create, and that stab to undermine existing prevailing wage standards, and thus, make more tenuous the social standing of native-born workers. Neither has NCLR advocated for the just resolution of the claims made by previous bracero workers who were denied the social security benefits, the funds of which were deducted from their wages, and due them by the U.S. and Mexican governments.

The Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, comprised of agribusiness, and major American corporations, but also includes NCLR, the National Immigration Forum, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and UNITE-HERE, with cozy relations with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been at the forefront in advocating for the 21st Century bracero program.

Contrariwise, all other labor unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, immigrants’ rights coalitions, national and regional Latino organizations, and immigrant-member organizations have steadfastly opposed bracero-type programs.

What we are witnessing today is a debate shaping up similar to that which occurred prior to the passage of NAFTA in 1994. Let’s call it NAFTA II, or NAFTA coming home to roost. A massive “guest-worker” program constitutes nothing more then the importation of bound labor, cheaper than domestic labor, the inverse effect of the massive exportation of manufacturing jobs to cheap labor aboard. Speaking before the American Trucking Association recently, Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, stated that a successful guest- worker program could “give all of you all the truck drivers you can hire.” Trucking companies are currently experiencing driver shortages. This is the real intent of big business with regard to any new contract-labor program, however the advocates of such may seek to soften the name with “guest,” “temporary,” or “new worker.”

U.S. Senator Ernest Gruening, who served in the U.S. Congress during the previous bracero period, observed at the time that, “Although American private enterprise was the beneficiary of an ample and docile labor supply, a large part of the costs were borne by the U.S. Government, i.e., the American taxpayers.” He characterized the program as one in which “corruption and exploitation were its steady concomitants. Gradually the imported labor replaced the domestic.”

Murguia claims that the critics of her position offer “no practical solutions for the flow of migrants that will surely continue or for the abuses these workers will face if they survive the trip across the border.” More than a decade after the approval of NAFTA, a fair trade to the new migrants who come to America to provide valued labor and service is a permanent visa – either employment-based or family relative-based. This would be the best measure to assure that prevailing wage standards are protected, that domestic labor not be undermined, and that labor and civil rights, and civil liberties, are more easily guaranteed. There can be nothing more practical to the migrant worker than permanent legal residency, which provides the minimum modicum of negotiating power with the employer, freedom of movement cross borders, a true statutory path to citizenship, and the ability to immigrate other loved ones.

Only such permanence in visa status will assure that new migrant workers not become a stratified permanent second-class workforce available primarily to benefit employers. Permanent legal resident status in exchange for the valued labor of the migrant worker is what I would call a fair trade, instead of the notoriously unfair “free trade” concept associated with NAFTA.

Nativo V. Lopez, National President of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), and the National Director of Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana. 2-26-07


_
WASHINGTON POST (Murguía Op-Ed): A Change of Heart on Guest Workers
By Janet Murguía Sunday, February 11, 2007; B07

After President Bush highlighted the need for a temporary-worker program as part of a larger immigration reform in his State of the Union address, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) compared the president's proposal to slavery. Rangel is right to be concerned. Our nation's history with such programs has been dreadful.

Many Latinos still have searing memories of the infamous bracero program, which more than 50 years ago became synonymous with worker abuse. The current guest-worker programs for agriculture and other "non-skilled" labor are not much better. Experience tells us that there is good reason to be concerned that a new worker visa program could repeat these mistakes, creating a permanent, sizable subclass of workers who endure harsh treatment while simultaneously undercutting their American co- workers.

Despite these concerns, after decades of strongly opposing temporary-worker programs for the very reasons that Rangel articulates, my organization and many Latino leaders find ourselves in the interesting position of being principal advocates for a significant new worker visa program as part of comprehensive immigration reform.

Some think we got here as the result of some devil's bargain with our allies among business leaders: They get a new worker program, and we get a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. Not so. We have concluded that a new legal pathway for the future flow of immigrant workers to the United States is the safest, most reasonable path for immigrant workers, for their co-workers in this country, and for a nation hungry for order and control at the border.

We share that hunger. Latinos know that even if we pass immigration reforms that include a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants who work, pay taxes and otherwise contribute to the United States, we will have failed to fix our nation's broken immigration system unless we do what previous reforms did not: Acknowledge that there will continue to be a flow across the border and that we will do everything we can to control and regulate it.

If this year's immigration debate accomplishes what the debate in 1986 did -- marry a legalization program with additional enforcement without addressing the future flow of migrants -- we will have addressed the symptoms of our broken system without repairing it. The cost of this mistake will be enormous: a continued death toll at the border; a sizable flow of undocumented workers who come to this country under harsher conditions; increased harassment of and discrimination against Hispanic Americans often mistaken for immigrants; and exacerbated public frustration that the immigration issue is still not under control.

But we do not have to repeat past mistakes. The immigration reform bill the Senate passed last year contains a much different model of a worker visa program than the unjust model we have lived with for decades. Workers would not be at the mercy of abusive employers in that they could change jobs and alert the authorities to mistreatment. Rather than becoming a permanent second-class workforce, they would have the opportunity to earn a path to permanent status -- and ultimately citizenship -- as one of the only classes of migrants able to petition for themselves rather than relying on an employer or relative to petition for them. There are important labor protections for immigrant workers as well as for their American co-workers, including a requirement that immigrant workers be paid the prevailing wage in an industry to avoid undercutting the wages of American workers employed there. The 110th Congress has an opportunity to build from this strong start and do even better.

We are deeply aware of the risks of going down this path in the immigration reform debate, including accusations that we are selling out one group of immigrant workers to help another. But our critics offer no practical solutions for the flow of migrants that will surely continue or for the abuses these workers will face if they survive the trip across the border. We owe it to migrants, as well as to the nation that their hard work will sustain, to shape a new path for migration that is legal, safe and endowed with protections for immigrant and American workers alike.

The writer is president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza.
















Join us in this prolonged campaign for driver's licenses and visas for our families. The first step in making change is to join an organization that pursues the change we desire. We welcome you to our ranks.
Other organizations leading this movement include: Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana, Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), MAPA Youth Leadership, Liberty and Justice for Immigrants Movement, National Alliance for Immigrant's Rights, and immigrant's rights coalitions throughout the U.S..

CONTACT:
Nativo V. Lopez, National President of MAPA (323) 269-1575