While everyone is focusing on the “Ooh, look! A squirrel!” impeachment show, Congress just passed a massive amnesty bill.
On Wednesday, the House passed a contentious agricultural bill that would likely put more than a million illegal immigrants on a pathway to legal status as part of what supporters say is a vital modernization of the industry’s workforce — but that immigration hawks blasted as a “large-scale amnesty.”
The Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which is above all an illegal immigration bill that would provide amnesty for millions of illegal agricultural workers and their spouses and children. passed 260-165. That means that some Republicans supported it.
The bill rewards illegal agricultural workers by creating a process where they can apply for a temporary ive-and-a-half-year (temporary?) Certified Agricultural Worker Status and a pathway to citizenship. All they need to do is show that they worked at least six months in the industry over the last two years.
Admit they illegally worked here and they get rewarded. Not only that, but it also rewards businesses who hire illegals over American citizens.
That’s what you get America when you put Nancy Pelosi in charge the House.
It gives illegals a choice to either have the status renewed indefinitely, or the illegal workers, and their illegal spouses and illegal children – chain migration – can start a path to legal status in the form of a green card, moving ever so much toward registering to vote as a Democrat.
To make us all feel good they added that the legislation requires background checks and a $1,000 fine. Wait a minute.
I thought the anti gun leftists told us that background checks never work.
To get that greed card, illegals who have worked in agriculture for 10 years or more have to work at least four more years in agriculture, and those who have been illegally working here for less than 10 years have to work for eight more years.
Once they get the green card, they can take away American jobs in any field of their choosing.
You realize that none of this would be necessary if these people just came into the country legally? This bill rewards illegals and spits in the face of those who came by following the rules of the process.
This is de-facto amnesty with no other way to describe it.
Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who sponsored the bill, said that it was a “historic” compromise and example of bipartisanship.
Bipartisanship to Democrats simply means they got everything they wanted and the Republicans did not.
“This bill is a compromise, it’s not exactly what I would have written but it does stabilize the workforce,” Lofgren said at the podium on the House floor. “We have farm workers who have been here for a very long time without their papers, living in fear and in some cases being arrested and deported.”
Honored to stand w/@RepNewhouse & the rest of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have worked tirelessly on this historic compromise solution for farmers & farmworkers across the US.
My statement on the House floor in support of our #FutureFarmWorkforce bill ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/a9SNbJoLyx
— Rep. Zoe Lofgren (@RepZoeLofgren) December 11, 2019
“We need to allow them to get an agricultural visa that is temporary and renewable so they can do the work we need them to do and their employers need them to do,” she said. “We need to stabilize the H-2A program, which this bill does. It simplifies it and also stabilizes wages.”
From Fox News:
The bill had support from a number of farm groups, but has faced fierce opposition from immigration restrictionists, who claim that the amnesty component is similar to one in the 1980s that was rife with fraud and saw more than a million illegal immigrants win protection. They also say that the bill keeps immigrant workers tied to their jobs in a form of indentured servitude until they get their green cards.
“The only thing worse than another large-scale amnesty is one that then forces people to continue to toil for poor wages and under poor working conditions for the same unscrupulous employers who hired them illegally in the first place,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said in a statement.
“While Congress continues to do nothing to secure our borders, passing a bill that rewards both illegal aliens and their employers, and calling it ‘modernization,’ is a slap in the face to the plurality of Americans who consider immigration to be the nation’s most pressing domestic issue,” Stein said.
The Heritage Foundation described the bill as a “clear cut example of amnesty,” warning that it “threatens the legal immigration system’s legitimacy and incentivizes aliens and farmers to ignore the legal immigration system in the future if it best serves their needs.”
Let’s just hope that the House Republicans who just supported amnesty in this bill don’t lend credence to the Republican-controlled Senate, because you don’t reward lawbreaking, and that’s exactly what this bill does.
GOP rising star Representative Dough Collins of Georgia mentioned estimates made by liberal groups who claim that there are at least 2.7 million farm workers in the US, and that more than half of them are here illegally. Wake up America!
That means that at least a million and a half illegal aliens could easily get legal status.
“While the 224 pages of H.R. 5038 make many more changes to the H-2A program — some good and some bad — one need look no further than the first few pages to figure out the real point of this bill: a path to citizenship for an unknown number of illegal immigrants who do some work in agriculture, along with their families,” Collins said at a Judiciary Committee markup last month.
According to Collins, the bill also allows illegals with more than one DUI convictions or illegals with a history of Social Security fraud, to get legal status.
This bill is an insult to people who come into the country legally, and it makes Americans less safe.
Call your senators today and tell them that you do not want them to vote for this amnesty bill as it undermines the very things President Trump and the Republicans in Congress worked so hard to do to provide more jobs for Americans, see wages rising for the first time in decades, and reward people coming into the country legally while removing people who cross our border illegally.
The Capitol Hill switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. Call your senators today.
