The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Senators Michael Bennet and Mike Crapo are attempting to put together an amnesty for illegal alien farmworkers that can pass both the Senate and House in the lame duck session and get enacted into law before Republicans take control of the House in January.
- Congress has not pulled this off since 1986
- The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986's (IRCA) "special agricultural worker" amnesty program provided temporary and later permanent legal status for aliens who had performed seasonal agricultural work in the U.S. for at least 90 days during the 12 months ending on May 1, 1986
The area that I particularly labored in [was to] come up with a compromise on agriculture. The sticking point [for IRCA] proved to be the farm worker program.
- Labor-connected Democrats insisted that foreign guest-workers would have an adverse impact on the wages and working conditions of domestic workers.
- Schumer was also up-front about the fact that his SAW amnesty was specifically designed to meet the needs of special interests.
When the House reconvened in 1984, a number of young legislative entrepreneurs worked behind closed doors to harmonize conflicting versions of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill
- With the blessing of party leaders, they sought to fashion a compromise package that satisfied growers while meeting union demands for worker protection.
The fraud:
- Only 72 percent of applicants for farm worker amnesty had work histories that qualified them for the program.
- The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has identified 398,000 cases of possible fraud in the program, but the agency admits that it lacks both the manpower and the money to prosecute individual applicants
- Unlike other immigration programs, which put the burden of proof on the applicant, the farm amnesty puts the burden on the Government. Consequently, aliens with even the most rudimentary documentation cannot be rejected unless the Government can prove their claims are false
- A study using California unemployment insurance data indicated that, assuming the entire universe of SAW-eligible workers were undocumented, there should have been between 115,000 and 188,000 applicants in the state.
This sorry history of fraud was preceded by Schumer's promise during the markup that fraud would not be a problem:
- During the markup, Schumer claimed that the program would "shut[] off one of the prime magnets to illegal immigration: an agricultural job."
- SAW actually encouraged illegal immigration.
- The U.S. Commission on Agricultural Workers later found that: "the SAW program... appears to have formed the foundation for continued illegal immigration through the following factors: (1) by facilitating the settlement of immigrants in the United States, thereby increasing the number of "anchor" households whose presence facilitates the transition into U. S. work and society for future authorized and unauthorized immigrants, [2] by facilitating cyclical migration, thereby reducing the costs for unauthorized immigrants to journey.north and enter the [SAW] plan with legally returning SAWs; (3) by stimulating unauthorized family unification in the [United States] as spouses join their husbands in the agricultural labor force; and (4) by "sending the message" that the route to legal status comes through illegal entry."
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