States Propose Immigration Programs

Pressed by a growing shortage of agricultural labor, the states of Arizona and Colorado have begun working on plans to set up their own guest worker programs. The new movement highlights the foolishness of the "enforcement-only" approach to the immigration controversy, showing that the more successful the effort is to prevent illegal immigration the more it damages our own economy. It is clear that only a comprehensive approach that takes into account both economic requirements and humane considerations can be a sensible response to the immigration issue.

Arizona is a particularly ironic case. The state first cracked down on illegal immigration, mandating serious penalties for hiring the undocumented and directing police to check the citizenship status of anyone stopped for any reason in order to deport as many as possible. In addition to increased federal border patrols, vigilante groups have set up shop and are active along the border too. The result? According to the Associated Press, "Last year ripe romaine lettuce sometimes went bad in the fields around Yuma, Arizona because (labor contractor Francisco) Chavez didn't have enough people to harvest the crop." Republican State Representative Bill Konopnicki owns a restaurant and says "the labor shortage has been mounting for several years."

Konopnicki is co-author of the Arizona legislation that would set up a state-supervised program allowing employers to, "recruit workers through Mexican consulates if they can document a labor shortage and unsuccessful efforts to find local employees." The bill was approved unanimously in a bipartisan Arizona House committee vote in February and now goes to the full body.

In Colorado, State Senator Able Tapia's bill would allow "the state to hire labor firms in Mexico to find workers" for labor-starved Colorado farms. The plan is an effort to get around cumbersome federal procedures that render it nearly impossible to get foreign workers by the time they are needed. The Colorado bill requires employers, "As an incentive for workers to return to their homelands...to withhold 20 percent of workers' wages and send the money after the workers return home."

The state efforts will likely come to naught. Former Border Patrol head and current Congressman Silverstre Reyes (D-Texas) says, "It's ironic that Arizona and Colorado are so eager for cheap foreign labor because in recent years both states have cracked down on undocumented immigration." He also feels, "It's unlikely the states would get the necessary (federal) permission to arrange their own foreign labor." That's because immigration is a federal responsibility under the constitution, a power the U.S. government and Congress would be unlikely to concede to the states. Law professor Kris Kobach of the University of Missouri at Kansas City said, "The proposals would never hold up in court."

True as that may be, it only underscores the failure of Congress to pass immigration reform in 2006 and 2007, when it folded in the face of extremist anti-immigrant criticism. Now some of the very states formerly at the forefront of the opposition have begun to recognize the shortsightedness of their earlier policies. It will be interesting to see whether common sense can prevail in time for the 2008 harvest, or whether election-year posturing will delay action until a new administration is inaugurated and a new Congress seated next January. I wouldn't bet on common sense, so be prepared for soaring produce prices the rest of this year.