About 150 family farmers — nearly 20 of them from California — held a press conference and met with their respective elected officials to push for what’s called AgJOBS. California’s farmers met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
AgJOBS, or the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act of 2007, could be passed as a stand-alone bill or part of the larger immigration legislation.
According to David Schwabauer — a Moorpark avocado and lemon farmer who took the trip east — the bill, which was defeated in the House last year, may in fact pass this year.
"I would say we’re cautiously optimistic," Schwabauer said, " (but) there’s still discussion going on within the ranks of the Senate. There’s still discussion going on between the Senate and the White House."
Farmers are hopeful AgJOBS passes because "the current system isn’t working. Employees and employers are working with too much uncertainty," said Jack King, manager of national public policy for the California Farm Bureau.
To amend that, the bill works on twolevels, King said. First, AgJOBS would help workers gain permanent residency status after three to five years and a certain number of hours worked.
Second, it would help streamline the process of establishing an ongoing guest worker program to prevent delays that could hurt perishable crops.
Nationally, about 1 million farm workers are employed — almost half in California.
Without a temporary worker program, one-third of U.S. fruit and vegetable production costing between $5 billion and $9 billion is at risk, according to farm bureau documents.
Last year, a labor shortage led to crop damages and financial losses.
If agricultural jobs are left empty, growers could eventually move away from work-intensive crops such as peppers, melons and tomatoes and embrace machine-harvested crops like almonds, King added.
To contact Cheryl Winkelman, call (209) 832-6144 or cwinkelman@trivalleyherald.com.