Potential E-Verify Deal Would Give Legal Status to Farmworkers

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats hope to broker a
deal with Republicans that would grant legal status to farmworkers
currently in the country illegally but would require employers to verify
the immigration status of all future hires.

Democrats hope the compromise could draw GOP support
by forcing employers to use E-Verify, a federal online system, to ensure
farmworkers are eligible to work, said David Shahoulian, the Democratic
chief counsel on the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration
subcommittee, speaking at an immigration policy conference earlier this
month in Washington, D.C. Farmers are not required to investigate claims
of legal status in most states.

The potential agreement would give a path to
citizenship to a large group of farmworkers for the first time since
President Ronald Reagan’s administration more than 30 years ago, when
tougher enforcement was also added. Farmworkers would get deportation
protection followed by eventual legal status if they keep working.

A Republican proposal last year would have offered
only temporary visas to such workers in exchange for E-Verify, but it
was voted down in the House.

More than a third of the nation’s 1 million
agricultural workers are noncitizens, according to the U.S. Census
Bureau’s 2019 Current Population Survey. Guest H-2A farmworker visas now
are available only for seasonal workers and require employers to
transport workers in and out of the country and to provide housing.

The latest potential compromise follows years of
discussion on Capitol Hill about how best to balance the needs of
agriculture interests and those of their workforce. A bill has not yet
been filed, but the proposal has some GOP support, Shahoulian said,
including from some conservative Senate Republicans who are “rooting for
it to get out of the House so they can at least get a look at it.”

But overall the potential deal faces a tougher road
in the Republican-controlled Senate — no Republican supporters have
spoken out, though the libertarian Cato Institute said the proposal has
merit.

“We are opposed to E-Verify in principle but as part
of a compromise for legalization and more workers, it’d be a sacrifice
worth making,” said Cato policy analyst David Bier. Bier said he had
heard that “a bipartisan group is close to a deal” on the proposal.

The plan is based on the “earned legal status”
concept in a Democratic bill introduced earlier this year by California
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren that would require
several years of documented farm work for deportation protection and
eventual citizenship.

Some farmworker advocates are lobbying to grant
farmworkers legal status without requiring future E-Verify checks, while
some Republicans want mandatory E-Verify use without granting legal
status to any current workers.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents
farmers and ranchers, declined to comment. Allison Crittenden,
congressional relations director for the lobbying group, cited
“sensitive discussions underway.”

A position paper from the Farm Bureau last year said
the group would consider mandatory E-Verify in exchange for granting
legal status to current workers and a better guest-worker visa program.

U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the ranking
Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, told Stateline he supports
mandatory E-Verify for farmworkers but said “we should not, however,
trade mandatory E-Verify for a bill that grants mass amnesty and a path
to citizenship to agricultural workers and their families that are
living here illegally.”

He called the current proposal “a nonstarter for most Republicans and the communities we represent.”

Ann López, director of the Center for Farmworker
Families in Felton, Calif., said she supports the proposal to allow
workers to stay legally, but without the E-Verify mandate, which she had
not heard about. She said many workers on California’s Central Coast,
where farms depend on immigrant field hands for the fragile strawberry
crop, live in fear.

“They constantly worry about their families being
torn apart by deportation, so that would alleviate the threat,” López
said, referring to the proposal. “This is such essential work that this
is the least we can do for people who are living in poverty and under
horrible conditions.”

The last time the nation granted similarly widespread
legal status, in 1987, more than a million immigrants were designated
“special agricultural workers.” The deal was supposed to keep the farm
labor supply intact in return for a law against “knowingly” hiring such
workers in the future, but a 2003 study found that few of the workers
granted legal status stayed in agriculture.

The program was stopped in 1988 after reports of widespread fraud, because papers declaring farmworker status were easily faked.

There have been numerous attempts since then to
balance the needs of farmers, who depend on the labor, and those who
want to discourage unauthorized immigration, said Philip Martin, an
emeritus professor of agriculture and resource economics at the
University of California, Davis.

Growers also would like to get easier temporary
guest-worker visas with lower pay and fewer housing requirements, which
may be part of the deal, Martin said.

Farmworkers from Mexico are more fearful now than in
years past about crossing the border and moving around in the United
States because of increased immigration enforcement. In the late 1990s
almost 80% of farmworkers in the country illegally migrated from job to
job, according to a 2016 University of California, Berkeley, study. That
number was down to 6% by 2016.

Dairy workers without legal permission in upstate New
York tend to be young men from Mexico or Guatemala living alone and
saving money to take home, in constant fear of deportation, said Camille
Mackler, director of legal policy at the New York Immigration
Coalition.

“They are subject to racial profiling and don’t have
driver’s licenses, so to get into town (with a car service) would cost a
day’s pay and they usually just don’t do it,” Mackler said. “They just
stay at home and work 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. It’s an
isolated and lonely existence.”

Such year-round workers would benefit from
guest-worker visas. Shahoulian, the Democratic counsel, said some
“streamlining” of guest-worker visas was part of the congressional
negotiations, but it’s not clear whether year-round workers would get
access to them.

The California Democrats’ bill would provide a “blue
card” to prevent deportation of farmworkers already here after 100 days
of documented farm work over two years, and a path to full legal status
and citizenship after three to five more years of farm work.

The conservative Center for Immigration Studies has
criticized that bill as “massive farmworker amnesty” that “would only
encourage further illegal immigration.”

The center did not respond to a request for comment
on the new proposal. Feinstein’s press secretary, Adam Russell, said it
was too early for his boss to comment, as the proposal was still being
finalized.

Some states, including Mississippi, do require all
employers to use E-Verify. Despite that, hundreds of immigrant poultry
processing workers were arrested in August at seven plants across the
state, some of them wearing ankle monitors indicating they were released
from immigration custody at the border. State officials are
investigating. Twenty-two states require E-Verify for at least some
employers.

In the most recent data, Georgia had the highest rate
of job screening with E-Verify in 2017, about 94% of all hires, partly
because E-Verify compliance is tied to business licenses under state
law. Pennsylvania was the latest state to add E-Verify requirements this
month, though it applies only to the construction industry.

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