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Business Group to Push for Immigration Changes

August 30, 2006

Katherine Yung

A coalition of Texas industry associations and businesses that depend heavily on immigrant labor are banding together to push for comprehensive immigration reform, including establishment of a guest worker program.

The launch of Texas Employers for Immigration Reform on Tuesday comes amid lingering divisions in Washington over how far to overhaul the country's immigration laws.

This year, the House of Representatives passed a bill to beef up border security, but the Senate went a step further, adding provisions for a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for some undocumented workers.

It's uncertain whether Congress will be able to reconcile the two competing bills, particularly given a tight timetable on Capitol Hill before the November elections.

In addition to a guest worker program, the Texas employers' group wants enhanced border security and a more reliable way for businesses to determine whether new hires are eligible to work in the U.S.

Although the group said it's opposed to amnesty, it urged lawmakers to establish some path that unauthorized workers already living in the U.S. can follow in order to obtain legal status.

"We are calling on the Congress of the United States to pass comprehensive immigration reform," Bill Hammond, chief executive and president of the Texas Association of Business and a co-chair of the group, said during a news conference in Dallas.

The coalition consists of 16 members, including the Associated Builders & Contractors of Texas, the Texas Hotel & Lodging Association and the Texas Nursery and Landscape Association.

"We're not looking for cheap labor. We're looking for available labor," said Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim, chairman of Pilgrim's Pride Corp., the poultry giant based in Pittsburg.

Mr. Pilgrim and other members said there aren't enough non-immigrant workers willing to do low-skill or labor-intensive work such as catching chickens, milking cows and cleaning hotel rooms.

"How many people can you get to squat down and catch chickens?" Mr. Pilgrim said, noting that his company was short 250 workers at the end of last week.

"I would not be able to operate my farm the way I do without immigrants," said David DeJong, owner of Horizon Dairy in Hico. "The workforce of the U.S. is not willing to do the work that I need to do."

Despite many employers' need for immigrant workers, opponents of guest worker programs see immigrant labor as a threat to Americans' livelihoods.

"We think that it unnecessarily drives down wages and working conditions for America's poorest citizens," said Jack Martin, special projects director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which is supporting the House bill.

Source: Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News
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