Today the Senate Judiciary Committee Approved the AgJOBS Proposal.

Several hundred thousand farmworkers who lack authorized immigration status took a major step forward today toward gaining the right to earn legal immigration status and improve their wages and working conditions. The Senate Judiciary Committee today approved a major piece of immigration legislation which includes a modified version of the AgJOBS farmworker immigration legislation. Since there is widespread support by farmworker advocates and agricultural employers, as well as legislators in both parties, there is a good chance that the Senate's final immigration legislation will include AgJOBS.

The United Farm Workers of America (UFW) played the leading role on behalf of farmworkers in winning this major victory.

AgJOBS contains two basic programs. First, the earned legalization program would allow many unauthorized immigrant farmworkers to earn legal immigration status by demonstrating their recent agricultural work experience in the U.S. and by continuing to work in agriculture for three to five years. Second, it would revise the H-2A agricultural guestworker program to streamline the process for employers while retaining major protections for workers.

The version approved by the Committee is somewhat different from the prior AgJOBS bill (S. 359/H.R. 884) due to an agreement reached between the bill’s primary sponsors and Senator Feinstein, as well as the UFW and representatives from the agricultural industry (an overview of the major differences between the two versions of AgJOBS is found below).

All of the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Senator Edward Kennedy, supported AgJOBS. The Committee Republicans who voted for AgJOBS were Senators DeWine, Brownback, and Specter. Senators Hatch and Graham “passed,” choosing not to vote on the AgJOBS amendment. The Republican opponents were Coburn, Grassley, Kyl, Sessions, and Cornyn.

The Committee finished its work and voted on the overall bill today, with 12 senators (all of the Democrats with Republican Senators Specter, Brownback, DeWine, and Graham) voting in support. The bill was reported to the Senate floor with Senator Specter stating that it was his understanding that Senator Frist would substitute the Committee bill for his own bill and begin the full Senate’s debate and vote on immigration this week. However, it’s not clear at the time of this writing what Senator Frist will do.

Today’s action is an important victory for farmworkers. AgJOBS is now part of the immigration bill passed out of the Committee, making it much more likely that AgJOBS will become law and that hundreds of thousands of farmworkers and their family members will have the opportunity to earn permanent resident status. Still, there are challenges ahead in winning passage in the Senate and then by the full Congress following a possible House-Senate Conference Committee.

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Differences between the prior and current versions of AgJOBS

There are some key differences between the earlier version of AgJOBS and the Feinstein amendment (agreed to by Senators Kennedy and Craig) that was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee: