That same bill also addresses agricultural labor issues through a package of legislation called AgJOBS, which has been touted as simultaneously creating a path to legalization for undocumented agricultural workers who make a commitment to staying in the industry and streamlining the H-2A process to make it easier for growers to get guest workers.
This legislation is sponsored by some of the most liberal politicians in Washington, D.C., including Ted Kennedy, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara Boxer (as well as Republicans like Larry Craig of Idaho and Utah's Chris Cannon), who have promised to try to pass it on its own if the larger immigration reform bill fails. Moreover, AgJOBS has the support of a broad coalition of growers' associations, labor groups, and immigrant-rights advocates, and is hailed as a compromise between the typically polarized interests of farm employers and labor.
Alex Stonehill
Yakima Valley workers
tend to an asparagus field.
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"We've had legislation legalizing undocumented workers that growers have been killing for years, and they've had H-2A reform legislation that we've been killing for years," says Erik Nicholson, an organizer for United Farm Workers. "AgJOBS is a compromise by both sides recognizing that to get what we want, we have to give the other side what they want."
But AgJOBS does virtually nothing to address the problems of guest workers, create a workable plan for enforcement of existing protections, or suggest investigation of the existing system before it is streamlined and expanded. If AgJOBS becomes law, it looks as if the guest workers of tomorrow may be the big losers in the immigration reform movement of today.
While border security is tightened, immigration reform continues to be debated, and the big agriculture outfits around Yakima blossom, Kampilo is without work, languishing in Eastern Washington halfway around the world from home. (Seattle Weekly agreed to honor a request by Kampilo's attorney to keep his precise whereabouts confidential.)
Anxious to help his family dig themselves out of debt, but unable to legally work, Kampilo is living off the kindness of other Thai immigrants in the area. He spends most of his days in a local Buddhist temple or doing odd jobs in the community while he waits for a decision in his class-action "lawsuit against Global Horizons. The case is currently in arbitration, and Kampilo hopes that it will be settled in his favor by this coming fall, with Global held responsible for reimbursing his recruitment fees. If not, or if Global declares bankruptcy in the face of the numerous other lawsuits and fines pending against the company, he'll be forced to return to Lampang with nothing.
"I'm sad and angry; I wish I could work to pay off the loan or bring my family here," says Kampilo, who says he misses his family but is too ashamed to return empty-handed. "I have to wait for the lawsuit to be over. I can't go back home without any money again."
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