Farmworkers achieved an important victory with the inclusion of AgJOBS in the immigration bill approved by a bipartisan majority in the Senate Judiciary Committee 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