Republicans Negotiate with Democrats on Illegal Alien Farmworker Amnesty

A group of mostly west coast Republicans is negotiating with Democrats on a plan to give amnesty to potentially millions of illegal aliens who work on United States farms.

A report from National Public Radio (NPR) details how Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) is working with Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO) on finalizing another version of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act to provide green cards, and eventually naturalized American citizenship, to as many as 2.1 million illegal aliens working on U.S. farms.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest lobbying group for Big Agriculture, is deeply involved in the intricacies of the farmworker amnesty, which would also allow more United States farms to outsource agricultural jobs to foreign H-2A visa workers.

NPR reports:

For over a year now, the top Senate negotiators on the bill – Democrat Michael Bennet of Colorado and Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho – have struggled to nail down a compromise for a handful of provisions. They’ve made progress, but the biggest hurdle is the lawsuit provision. It proposes to expand employee protections known as the Migrant and Seasonal Agriculture Workers Protections Act. [Emphasis added]

…

As of last week, Senate negotiators have reached tentative deals on a few provisions that had been holding them up – proposals that they say would help save employers money amid rising costs. For example, they agreed to freeze H-2A wages at current levels for the next year, and they are nearing a deal that would allow year-around employers to hire more workers than what the House proposed. [Emphasis added]

…

Crapo is not willing to put his name on a bill unless there is buy-in from a significant number of Republicans and unlocking support, or at least neutrality, from the Southeast is crucial, according to sources familiar with negotiations. [Emphasis added]

Reps. Mike Simpson (R-ID), Dan Newhouse (R-WA), and Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) have been lobbying fellow House Republicans on backing the farmworker amnesty and H-2A visa expansion.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), though, has repeatedly said that he will not bring any amnesty plan to the House floor if Republicans take back the chamber following this year’s midterm elections.

Last year, as Breitbart News reported, 30 House Republicans helped Democrats pass the farmworker amnesty which ultimately stalled in the Senate. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the House GOP Conference Chair, was one of those 30 Republicans.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the biggest backers of the farmworker amnesty and H-2A visa expansion.

These negotiations come after the Department of Justice released a 54-count indictment last year against 24 individuals, many of them illegal aliens, for operating a “modern-day slavery” scheme that utilized the H-2A visa program to traffic foreign workers into U.S. farm jobs — allegedly raping, kidnapping, and threatening them in the process.

This year a Florida-based company was accused of operating a Missouri farm that imported foreign H-2A visa workers to cut labor costs, denying them pay, and housing them in an old jail. In 2021, a handful of black Americans filed suit against United States farms along the Mississippi Delta for allegedly replacing them with imported H-2A visa workers from South Africa.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.