Statement Of Sen. Patrick Leahy
On Chambliss Amendment (SA 4009),
To Modify H-2AWage Requirements To S.2611,
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act
May 22, 2006

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act includes a subtitle known as “Ag JOBS,” a bill that has long been championed by Senator Craig, Senator Kennedy, and a broad bipartisan group of Senators. I strongly support this bill because it will help both farmers and farm workers in Vermont and around the nation.

Ag JOBS contains a package of reforms that are badly needed in the seasonal agricultural worker program, called H-2A visas. Ag JOBS was negotiated with the full participation of agribusiness and farmworkers’ unions, and it reflects a fair and thoughtful balance of the needs of both farmers and workers.

The version of Ag JOBS contained in S.2611 protects business by ensuring a steady flow of legal workers. It assists agricultural workers by preventing wage stagnation in a growing economy and by providing labor protections. It helps both business and labor by giving trained and trusted foreign agricultural workers a path to permanent immigration status if they meet the requirements in the bill, such as paying fines and taxes, keeping a clean criminal record, and working the requisite number of hours.

The Chambliss amendment is an attack on wages for agricultural workers who are among the lowest paid laborers in America. By unfairly favoring the growers over foreign workers, the Chambliss amendment would upset the careful balance on wages and labor protections that were negotiated with the participation of agribusiness and unions in the Ag JOBS bill.

The Chambliss amendment requires employers to pay workers the highest of two wage rates: the prevailing wage in the area of employment, which may be determined by an employer who conducts his own local survey, or the applicable State minimum wage. Basing wages on the higher of these two rates could result in deep cuts to wages. Some state minimum wages are very low, such as Kansas, which requires only $2.65 per hour. Senator Chambliss previously acknowledged that farm wages could fall by roughly $3 per hour under his proposal. His proposal almost guarantees that no U.S. workers could afford to accept agricultural jobs and that foreign agricultural workers, who are already among the most poorly paid workers in America, would be paid miserly wages for their labor.

The Chambliss formulation does not include the well-balanced provisions of Ag JOBS. Under Ag JOBS, an employer must pay the highest of three wage rates: (1) the prevailing wage, (2) the Federal or state minimum wage, (3) or the “adverse effect wage rate,” or AEWR, a regional weighted average hourly wage rate for agricultural workers. The AEWR was established under the Bracero guest worker program for Mexican workers that ended in the 1960s. It was created to ensure that guest workers would not adversely affect American workers by depressing wages. Removing AEWR from the wage equation drives wages downward, which hurts all workers -- American and foreign. It is no secret that our agricultural industries depend on cheap labor, and some estimate that 70 percent of agricultural workers presently working in the U.S. are undocumented. For all the of national security reasons I have cited throughout this debate, we need to bring agricultural workers out of the shadows. But we must also recognize that vulnerable populations deserve our support and protection. Farm workers are among the most vulnerable laborers in the Nation and I cannot support an amendment that would slash their wages further.

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