LAKE COUNTY — The Senate voted Tuesday to jump-start a stalled immigration measure to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants. President Bush said the bill offered a “historic opportunity for Congress to act,” and appeared optimistic about its passage by week”s end. The pivotal test-vote was 64-35 to revive the divisive legislation. It still faces formidable obstacles in the Senate, including bitter opposition by GOP conservatives and attempts by some waverers in both parties to revise its key elements.
In response to the cloture vote that passed today, which will limit debate on the measure in an effort to pass it through Congress as early as Thursday, United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez said in a press conference, “Today”s vote demonstrates the commitment the U.S. Senate has to fixing a system that is clearly broken. Last week, I was honored to be with farm worker leadership from across the country to share our concerns about the stalled bill. Today, we remain committed to ensuring that the rights of farm workers are protected throughout the process.”
The comprehensive reform measure, S.1639, contains a component known as AgJobs, which many farm groups see as key to ensuring their crops are picked, and not left to rot as 25 percent of Lake County”s pears did last year, a catastrophe Toni Scully, a local farmer and owner of Scully Packing Company, says was a result of the county lacking half of the 900 workers needed. She said that the goals included in the measure securing the borders and implementing a guest worker program that would provide a pathway to citizenship is key to ensuring there are enough seasonal workers in California, where 92 percent of workers are not born on U.S. soil.
The bipartisan bill is complex, with 762 pages spelling out its various components, some of them innocuous, such as Section 418, the student visa reform, and some provoking policy dispute from all sides, such as increased border patrols, construction of a fence along the border, increased whistleblower protections, and the agricultural guest-worker component AgJobs, which would grant U.S. residency to 1.5 million undocumented workers with a history of working in agriculture.
Editor”s note: The Associated Press contributed to this report.
