Opinion: Migrant workers at war!
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Like Cher and Barbra before him, the no-introduction-needed Mitchell Young comes out of retirement one more time to highlight a sneaky immigrant-farm-laborer amendment Senators on both sides of the aisle attempted to add to President Bush’s war funding request. Young smells a conspiracy of silence on our part, but I’m afraid the mundane truth is I didn’t know about this bit of trickery and would have opposed it if I had. (I say futzing around with guest worker visas is a half-measure that keeps entrepreneurs out: let everybody in!)
The proposal came from two luminaries who themselves need no introductions: Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho), and it was dead before I even heard about it:
Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez objected to the immigrant farm labor provision, which had been added to the measure at a hearing last week by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and Republican Larry Craig. It would have allowed almost 1.4 million immigrant farm workers to stay in the United States for up to five years to ease a shortage of farm workers that has left some crops rotting in the fields. Menendez’ objection also killed a measure by Sens. Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat, and Republican Judd Gregg, that would have extended an expired program to allow seasonal workers to return to the country using special visas. A spokesman said Menendez acted because the two immigration provisions were tilted in favor of businesses while doing too little to help immigrant workers.
Attempts like this one to shoehorn domestic items into war-related bills are offensive enough, but as always the real crime is the one that’s hidden in plain sight. These ‘emergency’ supplementals, as Veronique de Rugy writes in the L.A. Times every February, are a traveshamockery that should shock the conscience and insult the intelligence of every patriot, taxpayer and other honorable American.