Huffington Post
By Arturo Rodriguez
February 17, 2016
There
is more to Bernie Sanders' record on immigration than what was revealed
during his debate exchange with Hillary Clinton last week in Wisconsin.
He has made invaluable
contributions to the presidential debate, championing issues such as
income inequality and economic unfairness that the United Farm Workers
embraces. But the UFW has also been intimately involved championing
badly needed reform for immigrants, especially farm
workers, over the last 16 years. Sen. Sanders has had a contradictory
record on immigration.
We
came close to winning comprehensive immigration reform when a
bipartisan bill by Sens. Edward Kennedy and John McCain nearly passed
the Senate in 2007. That measure,
which would have granted legal status to millions of undocumented
immigrants, also included AgJobs, negotiated by the UFW and major grower
associations. AgJobs would have let undocumented farm workers earn the
right to permanently stay in this country by continuing
to work in agriculture after passing criminal background and national
security checks.
The
2007 comprehensive bill had flaws, including big expenditures on border
enforcement and a wall. There were too few guarantees to protect guest
workers in new industries,
although the bill boosted safeguards for guest workers in agriculture.
The
UFW had to make hard and painful choices during negotiations with
historic adversaries -- the growers -- in exchange for legal standing
freeing the undocumented from
what makes them so vulnerable to abuse. If that proposal--which
President George W. Bush pledged to sign -- had passed in 2007, would
there still be 11 million undocumented immigrants living today in fear
and constantly subjected to mistreatment? There would
not be. Would Donald Trump and most Republican presidential candidates
be appealing today to bigotry and rancor by scapegoating immigrants?
Maybe, but he would have to deal with as many as a million new voters.
The new president will also have to make painful
choices, even as the Latino and immigrant vote, and the immigrant
rights movement gain strength.
Sen.
Sanders voted against the Kennedy-McCain bill and led the push for
amendments that killed the measure because he opposed the conditions
pushed by business interests
for guest workers, he said during the Feb. 11 debate.
But
Sen. Sanders' opposition to abusive guest worker programs didn't extend
to a bill he cosponsored in 2011, to allow agricultural guest workers
into his home state's
largest farm sector -- Vermont's dairy industry. The federal H2A guest
worker program only applies to seasonal farm industries; dairies offer
year-round employment so they are excluded. But S. 852, cosponsored by
Sen. Sanders, would have let dairies use H2A
guest workers. There is no cap on the number of H2A farm workers and a
well-documented pattern of abuse of agricultural workers in the H2A
program. So the Sanders-backed measure could have let dairies replace
all current domestic farm laborers with foreign
guest workers -- with the same damaging impacts on wages and working
conditions for both domestic and foreign guest workers Sen. Sanders
decried in other industries.
Although
Sen. Sanders opposes use of guest workers because of concerns over
exploitation, is he willing to make an exception for guest workers in
agriculture? Is this
the same kind of exception that saw -- and still sees -- farm workers
excluded from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act guaranteeing minimum
wages and overtime pay after eight hours, and other protections.
For
the last five decades I've seen the farm labor system in this country
chew up and spit out farm workers, denying them the most basic
protections afforded nearly all
other American workers. That is wrong.
The
UFW respects Sen. Sanders' record on many things. But his contradictory
immigration record troubles farm workers. We hope he can address these
questions during the
next presidential debates and town halls.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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