Arturo Rodriguez
The president of the United Farm Workers has endorsed the immigration reform proposal announced today by President Barack Obama and separate proposals announced earlier by a bipartisan coalition of eight senators and by a coalition of agricultural groups, but he also differentiated among the proposals.

United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez was invited to join Obama when he delivered his address on immigration reform at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nev., and was accompanied by 30 farm workers from across California who drove through the night to attend the speech.

In a new release, Rodriguez said:

1. “We are cheered by the president’s insistence on a clear and unequivocal roadmap to citizenship.
2. We join President Obama in being encouraged by the bipartisan framework outlined by the senators on Monday. Yet we also applaud the president’s vow that if Congress does not act in short order, he will move forward with his own bill based on the principles he has outlined, and insist on a vote.
3. The bipartisan group of senators’ ambiguous and vague references to the existing H-2A agricultural guest worker program, and the suggestion that it should be replaced with a new visa program raises serious potential concerns for farm workers. The existing H-2A program contains a set of labor protections from abuse for farm workers from both sides of the border that were established during the Reagan administration and updated by the Obama administration.”

Rodriguez added, “What pleases us so much about President Obama’s remarks on this topic in Las Vegas is that he does not agree with the growers that a new visa program is needed and he does agree with the UFW that strong labor protections need to be continued.”

Earlier in a telephone interview, Rodriguez told The Hagstrom Report that his organization is interested in all three efforts to convince Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration reform proposal.

“Our first and utmost concern is to make sure the farm workers who are here are provided with a path to citizenship,” Rodriguez said.

The UFW’s second priority, he added, is “to make sure that guest workers are provided with protection and a path to citizenship at some point.”

A third priority, he said, is that an immigration bill takes into consideration “the special conditions that surround agriculture.”

Rodriguez estimated that there are 1.1 million farm workers in the United States who do not have legal documentation.

He also said that he was “happy” that the proposal announced by the eight senators on Monday placed a special emphasis on agriculture. But he added that he was concerned about the length of time it might take for undocumented farm workers to find a path to citizenship under the proposal.

Rodriguez also said he is interested in the proposal of the Agricultural Workforce Coalition that was announced recently, and that he is planning to work with the groups in that coalition on their proposal. He noted that UFW had worked with agricultural employer groups in the past, but that they seemed to want to make some changes from their proposals of several years ago.

Rodriguez also said he wants to make sure there is no revival of the Bracero Program, which brought Mexican workers into the United States from 1942 to 1964 under contract for agricultural work.

“It was a terrible program with lots abuse, exploitation and no enforcement,” Rodriguez said.

“Now is the time to move swiftly forward on a new immigration process in reality and not just preachment, a process that brings long-overdue recognition to hard-working, tax-paying immigrants whose hard labor and sacrifice feed all of America and much of the world,” Rodriguez added in the news release.

Rodriguez was in Las Vegas with a group of immigration advocates, including:

• Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice Education Fund
• Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
• Laura Murphy, director of the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union
• Astrid Silca, co-founder of DREAM Big Vegas
• Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, and
• Minerva Carcano, Los Angeles bishop of the United Methodist Church.

Their attendance was coordinated by America's Voice Online, an immigration reform group.