By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor
The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday rejected Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte’s immigration bill, the Securing America’s Future (SAF) Act. The measure failed to pass by a vote of 193-231, with all Democrats and 41 Republicans voting against it.
The bill, HR 4760, included Goodlatte’s ‘Agriculture Guestworker (AG) Act,’ which would reform the current H-2A guest worker program. In a press release, Goodlatte championed enforcement of immigration laws and securing the U.S. borders.
Goodlatte said the proposed legislation “combines enforcement measures and increased border security to enhance public safety to ensure the door remains open to law-abiding immigrants and restore the rule of law.”
The bill would have limited family-based visas, eliminated the diversity visa program, provided funding for a wall along the southern U.S. border, created a new agricultural guestworker program and revised the employment verification system.
Earlier this year, Texas Farm Bureau, along with 50 other agricultural organizations, asked Congress to support the legislation in order to fix the agricultural guestworker program, the most pressing immigration issue for agriculture.
The groups said in a letter to Congressional leaders that the existing guestworker program is expensive, burdensome and causes labor shortages throughout the agricultural sector.
On Thursday morning, the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) board of directors voted unanimously to support Goodlatte’s bill. AFBF President Zippy Duvall sent a letter shortly after to all members of the House encouraging them to vote in favor of the legislation.
“The American Farm Bureau will continue to work for improved provisions for those who are helping to sustain our sector today,” the letter stated. “While those workers should not be granted an unfair advantage over others, we must recognize the important contribution they are making to sustaining farms and ranches across the country and provide them the best possible path to legalization. But those changes cannot be made if HR 4760 fails and the legislative process comes to a halt.”
The failure of HR 4760, however, does not mean the issue is permanently closed. A second vote on a compromise measure will likely occur next week.
“The current guestworker process is extremely expensive and difficult to navigate and is in need of drastic reform,” Laramie Adams, TFB national legislative director, said. “The agriculture guestworker portion of the SAF Act would provide a major step forward to fixing the broken system. We appreciate Chairman Goodlatte and his staff for their steadfast work on this legislation and hope to see it passed, so we can move forward on solving the labor issues our hardworking farmers and ranchers are facing.”