WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado unveiled long-awaited legislation Thursday to revise the agricultural visa system and offer migrant farmworkers a path to permanent residency — a last-ditch effort to enact changes after bipartisan talks fell apart.
The legislation largely mirrors the so-called Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a bill the House passed last year with more than two dozen Republican votes.
But notably missing from Bennet’s bill is support from Sen. Michael D. Crapo, the Idaho Republican who has been negotiating with Bennet for nearly a year on the Senate version.
Without a Republican backer in the Senate, Bennet’s bill could face slim odds in the evenly divided chamber, where bills need at least 60 votes to move forward and immigration bills get tangled in politics about U.S.-Mexico border security.
The legislation also faces a short and crowded timeframe, with less than two weeks left in the legislative calendar. Bennet is announcing the bill at a Thursday morning press conference alongside Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington, the Republican sponsor of the House bill.
The Bennet-Crapo negotiations were part of multipronged efforts by various bipartisan groups of senators to pass legislation to revise parts of the U.S. immigration system this session.
Those efforts have heated up in recent weeks during the lame-duck period, seen as the last chance for Congress to pass a bill legalizing undocumented immigrants before Republicans take over the House next month.
As recently as last week, Bennet said in a brief interview at the Capitol that he was “still working” and “hopeful that we can get something over the finish line here.”
He acknowledged the closing window for action. “The time to do it is now, that’s for sure,” Bennet said on Dec. 6. “You can’t miss this opportunity.”
This tight window also threatens to doom separate immigration negotiations between Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who have recently shopped around their own proposal that would offer a path to citizenship for certain young immigrants brought to the country as children in exchange for heightened border security measures.
An aide for Bennet said they are hoping to see his legislation attached to the fiscal 2023 government funding package, which Democrats hope to pass next week. Tillis said last week he didn’t see his own proposal with Sinema as a candidate for that funding package.
Bennet’s bill, dubbed the Affordable and Secure Food Act, aims to counter rising food prices by tackling labor shortages in the agricultural sector.
The bill would create a new immigration status for migrant farmworkers and their families, which would allow them to eventually apply for permanent residency after a requisite number of hours of farm labor over a decade.
It also aims to revamp the H-2A visa program, which currently allows employers to hire migrant farmworkers for seasonal labor without offering the workers a path to permanent status.
For U.S. farmers, the H-2A program not only fills labor shortages, but is a source of farm workers with legal immigration status. About half of all agricultural workers in the U.S. are undocumented.
Fruit and vegetable growers account for much of the H-2A demand. The Labor Department approved a record 317,619 jobs in fiscal 2021 as eligible to be filled by workers with H-2A visas, up from 275,430 in fiscal 2020. The U.S. actually issued 258,000 H-2A visas in fiscal 2021.
Bennet’s bill would allow employers to request some H-2A workers for year-round work. It would also freeze farmworkers’ wages in 2023, and limit how much they could increase over the following decade to stem rising labor costs.
The legislation also seeks to crack down on businesses that hire undocumented workers, including by mandating that agricultural employers use E-Verify to ensure their employees are authorized to work in the U.S.
