Press Room

Op Ed in Napa Valley Register: Rep. Thompson’s opportunity to move agriculture in right direction

As the debate over our nation’s immigration policy takes center stage, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) of Napa County has the opportunity to help shape a new national immigration policy that improves conditions for farmworkers, agricultural employers, and consumers in California and across the country.

In early 2013, representatives of agricultural workers and employers, working with a bipartisan quartet of senators that included California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein, negotiated a hard-fought compromise on immigration policy addressing the needs of agricultural stakeholders and our nation’s food security. In June, the Senate included that agreement in its bipartisan immigration reform legislation.

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), ignored the stakeholder agreement and instead approved Goodlatte’s Agricultural Guestworker Act, which would expand employer access to exploitable and cheap guestworkers.

Undocumented immigrants compose more than half of the farm labor force nationally, but there are still hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents working on farms in California and elsewhere. This flawed Goodlatte bill would incentivize and allow employers to displace U.S. workers by providing expanded access to foreign guestworkers who work for less.

That’s bad for both U.S. workers and for the guestworkers left to do the work. Goodlatte’s bill is both anti-U.S. worker and anti-immigrant; it can be stopped, though, with the support of members like Congressman Thompson.

A vineyard owner and co-founder of the Congressional Wine Caucus, Rep. Thompson knows the value of agriculture to California and the nation, and understands the imperative of a stable, productive farm labor force. With an annual output of more than $43 billion, California is by far the country’s largest producer of labor-intensive fruits, vegetables and dairy products.

The value of California’s agricultural exports has grown rapidly in the last decade, reaching a record-breaking $16.7 billion. Immigrant farmworkers are a big part of that continued success.

Instead of creating armies of “guests” to harvest our food, it’s time to modernize agricultural labor by granting the farmworkers already on the job a road map to legal immigration status and citizenship.

The Goodlatte guestworker act does the opposite by marginalizing farmworkers. Undocumented workers already in the fields would essentially be required to self-deport, with a slim hope of obtaining a new job offer and guestworker visa.

The bill would cause farmworkers with spouses and children (many of them citizens) living here in the U.S. to suffer separation and hardship. Such destabilization of the workforce also could disrupt our food supply.

The Goodlatte program would allow employers to bring in 500,000 new agricultural guestworkers each year in addition to those undocumented workers who return home and are brought back on guestworker visas. Neither the future farmworkers nor the current undocumented farmworkers would ever have the opportunity to earn full immigration status or a chance at citizenship.

The new program would strip U.S. workers and future guestworkers of most of the few labor protections they have in the current H-2A program. Guestworkers attempting to challenge a violation of wage requirements or other working conditions would not have meaningful access to attorneys or the courts. Growers could offer U.S. workers and foreign guestworkers wage rates even lower than those required in the program today.

The agricultural stakeholder agreement in the Senate bill is a carefully balanced compromise that has broad support and resulted from months of negotiations between agribusiness groups, the United Farm Workers and organizations like mine that assist farmworkers, and a bipartisan group of members of Congress.

The agricultural stakeholder agreement would stabilize the farm workforce and ensure a secure food supply by granting experienced farmworkers and their family members who meet eligibility requirements an opportunity to keep working and eventually to earn lawful permanent residency.

It would also give farmers access to future guestworkers through a new program that reduces employers’ costs while offering protection to U.S. workers against job loss and wage depression.

That’s a more humane and more practical approach than the Goodlatte bill, and Rep. Thompson should push for it.

Goodlatte claims his new bill would put “farmers in the driver’s seat,” but instead it throws the men and women who are working on farms and ranches today under the bus. Instead of pushing today’s farmworkers farther into the margins of society, it’s time we acknowledge their value and honor their difficult work.

Goldstein is president of Farmworker Justice in Washington, D.C.

EPA Failure to Address Discrimination of California Latino Schoolchildren: Lawsuit Filed to Remedy EPA’s Civil Rights Program

OXNARD, Calif. – More than a decade after Latino parents filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) detailing the dangerous levels of pesticides at Latino public schools throughout California, they continue to experience racial discrimination. In August of 2011 EPA found that California Latino schoolchildren suffer disproportionately from exposure to pesticides and due to spraying near their schools, the EPA has yet to remedy this discrimination.

To try and finally force the EPA to protect civil rights, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE), California Rural Legal Assistance Inc., Farmworker Justice and The City Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of the original plaintiffs, the Garcia family, and multiple generations of Latino schoolchildren who still do not have substantive protection from the EPA.

In 1999, the Garcia family alleged that their children and other Latino children were being exposed to dangerous levels of pesticides at their public schools, which are directly adjacent to several strawberry fields where methyl bromide and other fumigants are sprayed. In 2011, the EPA issued the first ever preliminary findings of racial discrimination based on Garcia’s claims. The EPA then entered into secret negotiations without the Garcias and issued a settlement that does not remedy the discrimination they suffered. EPA failed and continues to fail to protect the Garcias’ rights to freedom from racial discrimination.

“I will keep fighting for my family,” said Maria Garcia, a mother and grandmother, as the lawsuit was filed. This discrimination has gone on so long that Maria’s son who participated in the original suit as a high school student is now a father with two children who will attend the same polluted schools he did. These schools like many other schools in California with high concentrations of Latino students continue to face dangerous levels of pesticide exposure.

Fifty years ago this week marks the March on Washington that helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act which intended to protect families like the Garcias. At that march, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shared his dream for a better country where all children could enjoy the full benefits America has to offer. The struggle to realize that promise today continues as the EPA has failed time and again to comply with its own civil rights guidelines.

Remarkably, the Garcias continue to dream for justice for their children and Latino children throughout California. Their complaint challenges the EPA’s own Civil Rights Act regulations and if successful the lawsuit has the potential to allow other people of color across the country more access to protections from racial discrimination. And it will formally recognize that a healthy environment is not a luxury but a civil right.

Farmworker Justice OpEd: Rep. Gibson (NY) Has A Choice

As the debate over immigration policy takes center stage and lawmakers in the Senate pursue the hard work of compromise, Rep.Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, has a choice. He can support immigration policy that improves conditions for farmworkers, agricultural employers and consumers, or he can aggravate existing problems in the agricultural labor market and displace thousands of farmworkers, many of them U.S. citizens.

The Senate's approach to comprehensive immigration reform includes a bipartisan, labor-management compromise on agriculture. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., last month rejected that compromise. Instead, it approved Goodlatte's "Agricultural Guestworker Act," which would expand employer access to exploitable and cheap guestworkers. Doing so would pave the way for employers to hire foreign guestworkers over U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, while making life even harder for those currently harvesting crops across the country. The bill is both anti-U.S. worker and anti-immigrant; it needs to be stopped.

While undocumented immigrants compose more than half of the farm labor force nationally, there are still hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents working on farms in New York and the nation. The provisions in this flawed bill would give incentives to employers to displace these U.S. workers by providing access to cheap, exploitable guestworkers. It's bad for U.S. workers and for the guestworkers left to do the work.

New York's farms, which generate almost $4.4 billion annually in value from dairies, fruit orchards and other agricultural products, are important contributors in the state's economy.

Gibson surely is aware that for decades some New York growers of apples and other crops have used — and sometimes abused — Jamaican, Mexican and other foreign workers under the H-2A agricultural guestworker program.

It's time to modernize agricultural labor by granting undocumented farmworkers already hard at work a road map to a true immigration status and citizenship. The Goodlatte Agricultural Guestworker Act does just the opposite by marginalizing farmworkers. Undocumented workers already working in the fields would essentially be required to self-deport with only the hope of obtaining a new job offer and guestworker visa. The bill would cause farmworkers with spouses and children living here in the U.S. to suffer separation and hardship.

The Goodlatte program would allow employers to bring in 500,000 new agricultural guestworkers per year in addition to those undocumented workers who return home and are brought back on guestworker visas. Neither the current undocumented farmworkers nor the future farmworkers would have the opportunity to earn immigration status and the freedoms of citizenship.

There is a compelling alternative to this one-sided bill. The Senate's immigration reform bill includes a compromise for agriculture that has broad support and resulted from months of difficult negotiations between major agribusiness groups, organizations like mine that assist farmworkers and a bipartisan group of senators.

That's a more humane and sensible approach. Gibson should push for it.

Goodlatte claims his bill would put "farmers in the driver's seat," but instead it's essentially throwing the men and women who are working on farms and ranches today under the bus. The farmworkers putting food on our tables deserve better. Instead of pushing them farther into the margins of society, it's time we acknowledge their value and honor their difficult work.

Advocates Challenge EPA’s Continuing Failure to Protect Children and Families From Hazardous Pesticide Drift

On July 24th, a coalition of farmworker, public health, and conservation advocates filed a challenge in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect children from unsafe exposures to toxic pesticides. The suit seeks an answer to a petition that the advocates filed with the agency in … Read more Advocates Challenge EPA’s Continuing Failure to Protect Children and Families From Hazardous Pesticide Drift

New Farmworker Justice Report Profiles Dangers of Pesticide Poisoning & Offers Recommendations for EPA Action

Our new report exposes the serious health risks faced by thousands of farmworkers each year from pesticide exposure, and the failings of workplace regulations and standards to prevent the high rate of pesticide-related injuries, illnesses and deaths.

Exposed and Ignored: How Pesticides are Endangering Our Nation’s Farmworkers provides an overview of the harm caused to farmworkers across the country by pesticide exposure, including personal stories of workers and their families who have suffered serious illnesses. Despite the preventable nature of pesticide exposure, few farmworkers are properly notified of the risks they face on a daily basis and regulations aimed at protecting workers against pesticide exposure have not been updated in more than 20 years.

“Each year pesticide exposure poisons as many as 20,000 farmworkers, yet regulations to protect these vital workers have not been updated to address this growing problem,” said Virginia Ruiz, Director of Occupational and Environmental Health for Farmworker Justice. “These injuries, illnesses, and deaths are preventable by taking the necessary steps to protect our farmworkers and their families.”

Pesticide exposure causes farmworkers to suffer more chemical-related injuries and illnesses than any other workforce nationwide. Short term effects include stinging eyes, rashes, blisters, blindness, nausea, dizziness, headache, coma and even death. Long term impacts such as infertility, neurological disorders and cancer are also prevalent. Not only are farmworkers subjected to these risks, but their families who live in nearby communities and go to schools neighboring the fields face the same dangers.

The report offers recommendations to improve the safety of American farmworkers and their families, including:

-Updated Worker Protection Standards that require more frequent and thorough pesticide safety training, medical monitoring of workers exposed to risky pesticides, and improved safety precautions to limit contact with pesticides, particularly for pesticide handlers.
-Spanish translations of pesticide labels.
-Creation of buffer zones around schools and residential areas to protect farmworker families who are exposed through aerial drift.
-A national reporting system of pesticide use and poisonings and increased funding to research the health effects of repeated pesticide exposure.

“Just as we establish standards and regulations to protect workers in every industry, we must address the health and safety of the farmworkers who labor each day to put food on our tables,” said Ruiz. “Current workplace regulations are failing to keep American farmworkers safe.”

Hi-Res report version available here

Richmond Times-Dispatch Op-Ed by Bruce Goldstein: Goodlatte Bill moves agriculture in wrong direction

In the Richmond Times-Dispatch Saturday, there are two op-eds regarding agricultural worker immigration policy and the Agricultural Guestworker Act, authored by Rep. Goodlatte (R-VA), and passed by the House Judiciary Committee. In the first op-ed, Farmworker Justice President Bruce Goldstein criticizes that bill’s approach and calls for a path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers and reasonable protections under guestworker programs. Rep. Goodlatte's bill is the worst of all worlds in that it is anti-U.S. worker, anti-immigrant, and anti-worker. The second op-ed is by Rep. Goodlatte, defending his bill (link included below).

Goldstein: Bill moves agriculture in wrong direction

As the debate over our nation’s immigration policy takes center stage and lawmakers in the Senate pursue the hard work of compromise, Virginia’s 6th District Congressman Bob Goodlatte is leading a very different charge in the House of Representatives that would aggravate existing problems in the agricultural labor market and displace thousands of farmworkers, many of them U.S. citizens.

Goodlatte is aggressively pushing forward the Agricultural Guestworker Act, which would expand employer access to exploitable and cheap guest workers. Doing so would pave the way for employers to hire foreign guest workers over U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, while making life even harder for the men and women harvesting crops across the country. The bill is anti-U.S. worker and anti-immigrant and it needs to be stopped. It passed out of a committee he chairs in Congress last week.

While undocumented immigrants compose more than half of the farm labor force, there are still hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents working on farms in Virginia and across the country. The provisions in this flawed bill would incentivize employers to displace those U.S. workers by providing access to cheap, exploitable guest workers. That’s bad for U.S. workers and for the guest workers left to do the work.

Agriculture is Virginia’s largest industry, employing almost 60,000 farmers and farmworkers and generating approximately $2.9 billion in output annually — so Goodlatte’s interest is no surprise. He’s well aware that for decades some of Virginia’s tobacco, apple and other farmers have used — and sometimes abused — the existing H-2A agricultural guest worker program. Farmers in Virginia make use of roughly 3,500 agricultural guest workers, placing Virginia among the top 10 states using the program.

Instead of creating armies of “guests” to do our work, it’s time to modernize agricultural labor by granting undocumented farmworkers already hard at work a road map to a true immigration status and citizenship. Goodlatte’s bill does just the opposite by marginalizing farmworkers. The undocumented workers already working in the fields would essentially be required to self-deport with only the hope of obtaining a new job offer and guest worker visa to return. Goodlatte’s bill would cause farmworkers with spouses and children living here in the U.S. to suffer separation and hardship. It also would disrupt our food system.

The new program would allow employers to bring in 500,000 agricultural guest workers per year in addition to those undocumented workers who return home and are brought back on guest worker visas. Neither the current undocumented farmworkers nor the future farmworkers would have the opportunity to earn immigration status and the freedoms of citizenship.

The new program would strip U.S. workers and future guest workers of most of the labor protections they have in the current H-2A program. Guest workers attempting to challenge a violation of wage requirements or other working conditions would not have meaningful access to attorneys or the courts. Meanwhile, participating growers could offer U.S. workers and foreign guest workers wage rates and other job terms even lower than those required in the program today.

There is a compelling alternative to this one-sided bill making its way through the House of Representatives. The Senate’s immigration reform bill includes a carefully balanced compromise for agriculture that has broad support and resulted from months of difficult negotiations between major agribusiness groups, organizations like mine that assist farmworkers and a bipartisan group of senators.

The Senate bill would stabilize the farm labor workforce and ensure a secure food supply by granting experienced undocumented farmworkers and their family members who meet eligibility requirements an opportunity to keep working, obtain legal immigration status and earn lawful permanent residency. It would also give farmers access to future guest workers through a new program that substantially reduces employers’ costs while protecting U.S. workers from job loss and wage depression and preventing abuse of guest workers.

That’s a more humane and more sensible approach than Goodlatte’s bill.

He claims his new bill would put “farmers in the driver’s seat,” but he’s essentially throwing the men and women who are working on those farms today under the bus. The farmworkers putting food on our tables deserve better than Goodlatte’s one-sided bill. Instead of pushing farmworkers farther into the margins of society, it’s time we acknowledge their value and honor their difficult work.

Link to Rep. Goodlatte's Op-Ed:

Goodlatte: House bill provides easy access to legal agricultural workforce

Senate Immigration Compromise: A Step Forward for Farmworkers

Farmworker Justice Statement Following Senate Passage of Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act

“We’re one step closer to fixing our broken immigration policy and modernizing agricultural labor relations,” the president of Farmworker Justice said today after the Senate approved the compromise immigration reform bill by a vote of 68-32.

“This carefully negotiated bill won broad support in part because it includes tough compromises made by agricultural workers and employers. While the agricultural worker programs are not perfect, they will help improve the lives and working conditions of the men and women working to put food on our tables and will help ensure a productive agricultural sector,” said Bruce Goldstein.

“If enacted, this bill would help stabilize the farm labor workforce and grant eligible undocumented farmworkers the opportunity to earn legal immigration status by proving their recent agricultural work in the United States and continuing to work in agriculture. It would help families remain together and build better lives for farmworker families while affording growers access to skilled and reliable workers.

“The agricultural worker compromise included in the bill has the broad support of major agribusiness groups, farmworker advocates, and now the U.S. Senate. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives should follow the Senate’s lead and take up this bill without delay.”

Guestworker Bill Approved by House Judiciary Committee Is Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Worker

The House Judiciary Committee narrowly passed an amended version of the “Agricultural Guestworker Act” sponsored by Committee Chair Robert Goodlatte (R-VA). This legislation is fundamentally anti-immigrant and anti-worker and will make life worse for hundreds of thousands of farmworkers already in this country, many of them U.S. citizens, the president of Farmworker Justice said today.

“This legislation would replace the current H-2A agricultural guestworker program with a devastating new H-2C program, expanding employer access to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable new “guestworkers” brought in from outside the country. It is anti-U.S. worker because it allows employers to provide lower wages and worse benefits to both American citizens and permanent-resident immigrants. As the new program erases existing labor protections, U.S. workers will be displaced or earn lower wages.

“It is also harmful to those undocumented workers already laboring in our fields. Unlike the compromise bill in the Senate, this bill denies current undocumented farmworkers, who make up more than one-half of the farm labor force today, the chance to earn legal immigration status or citizenship. Instead, undocumented workers would be required to self-deport with only the hope of obtaining a job offer and an H-2C visa. Instead of supporting families, this bill will cause farmworkers with spouses and children living here in the U.S. to suffer separation and hardship.

“This is a one-sided bill that does nothing to benefit the men and women working to put food on our tables. It stands in stark contrast to the more balanced agricultural immigration compromise drafted by a bipartisan group of senators and a coalition of interested parties including the United Farm Workers and agricultural employers. That compromise would benefit not only farmworkers and agricultural employers, but also our national interest in a secure, safe food supply.

“We are a nation of immigrants, not a nation of guestworkers,” Goldstein said.

Click here for a full summary from Farmworker Justice of the “Agricultural Guestworker Act”, H.R. 1773.

Farmworker Justice Statement on Rep. Goodlatte’s Immigration Bill Markup by House Committee on Judiciary

Legislation likely to be approved by the House Judiciary Committee today will make life worse for hundreds of thousands of farmworkers – many of them U.S. citizens – already in this country and working in the fields, while denying current undocumented farmworkers a road map to citizenship and destabilizing the country’s farm labor force, the president of Farmworker Justice said today.

“The Agricultural Guestworker Act (HR 1773) sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) would aggravate the problems in our broken immigration policy by expanding employer access to vulnerable new “guestworkers” brought in from outside the country, displacing hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants working in agricultural labor. The guestworkers available to employers under the new system would be deprived of basic labor protections and guestworkers attempting to challenge a violation of wage standards or other working conditions would not have meaningful access to attorneys or the courts. Meanwhile, growers would have access to another 500,000 new guestworkers at wage rates even lower than those prevailing today.

“While some undocumented farmworkers in the U.S. would be eligible to become guestworkers, these workers would simply be trading one form of second-class status for another, and would have no chance to become a member of the society they help to feed. The bill would also tear families apart by failing to provide any opportunity for the farmworkers’ spouses and children to obtain legal immigration status.

“We are a nation of immigrants, not a nation of guestworkers,” Goldstein said.

New Farmworker Justice Report Profiles Americans Working in Agriculture

A new report profiling American farmworkers and their stories dispels the myth that U.S. workers do not take jobs as farmworkers. Who Works the Fields? The Stories of Americans Who Feed Us offers a sampling of stories from both U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents working on farms. Although a majority of farmworkers today are undocumented … Read more New Farmworker Justice Report Profiles Americans Working in Agriculture