Proposed guest-worker policy lacks adequate protections

IN 1986, the United States legalized about 3 million people when it adopted the Immigration Reform and Control Act - a law whose main purpose was an attempt to control unauthorized immigration into the United States. Yet, barely 18 years after its passage, between 8 million to 12 million undocumented workers are estimated to be living in the United States.

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Undocumented migrant laborers looking for low-paying jobs as farm and packing-house help, construction workers and cleaning-service staff risk their lives in dangerous border crossings to take work that many U.S. citizens are unwilling to accept. These individuals often live for years under the threat of deportation, exposing them to abuse by corrupt employers.

Although migrant workers are a resource to the economy, too often they are seen as a burden to society. In the past decade, Southern states such as Georgia have witnessed exponential growth in the number of illegal migrant workers living and working there. At present an estimated 230,000 illegal migrant workers live in Georgia alone.

MIGRANT WORKERS are a vital part of Georgia's economy and culture; they harvest onions in Vidalia, work in meat-packing plants from Claxton to Gainesville, are a major labor supply for Dalton's multimillion-dollar carpet industry, and join us for worship on Sunday mornings.

Yet migrant and seasonal workers are a vulnerable group exposed to the repetitive and physical demands of their jobs, which include exposure to dangerous pesticides in the fields where they labor, a pay rate of less than minimum wage and substandard housing and living conditions - to name a few.

On Jan. 7, President George W. Bush proposed a new temporary worker program that will match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs. This program will offer legal status, as temporary workers, to the millions of undocumented men and women now employed in the United States.

THE PRESIDENT'S attempt to address this issue is commendable. Maybe he can lead the nation into a rational debate on the topic of immigration. However, I believe this program is primed for failure because it has come about largely as a result of political factors driven primarily by large agribusiness interests, with little consideration for the rights of the migrant worker - a necessity if we are to honestly approach immigration reform.

A central tenet of President Bush's proposal is that the new system will be more compassionate, allowing protection under current U.S. labor law. Although details of President Bush's plan have yet to be made fully available, it appears that the plan will do little to prevent the exploitation of foreign workers.

UNDER PRESIDENT BUSH'S plan, workers can only work for the employer who hired them. If workers are subjected to unacceptable working conditions, they cannot simply quit and then go to work for someone else. Doing so would change their immigration status and they would be subject to deportation.

Furthermore, even though their status is legal they would most likely not demand collective bargaining agreements for fear of being easily replaced. That being the case, they can either put up with anything their employer demands or risk deportation.

We need an immigration policy that gives all workers the same rights and protections on the job regardless of their immigration status. Allowing businesses and employers to select the best worker for the job regardless of citizenship status is central to the free market and assures the best person for the job.

Yet too often, powerful agribusiness interests engage in overly simplistic terms. They tell the public that without access to large scale migrant labor, the American economy would collapse.

WHAT THEY do not say is that they are unwilling to raise the piece rate by a few cents, nor do they want to invest in labor-saving machinery, nor do they wish to cope with the vagaries of the American labor market - a problem faced by small-business owners.

Rather, they have consistently wielded their political power to keep wages low and keep incomes depressed by supporting programs which allow them unlimited access to a pool of cheap and expendable labor.

(Editor's note: The author is an associate professor of political science at Augusta State University and a research associate with the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego.)

--From the Wednesday, February 4, 2004 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle