05/12/06 Senate to resume immigration debate

Washington Ag May 12, 2006 U.S. Senate leaders reached a deal yesterday that revives immigration reform legislation with the aim of passing a bill before Memorial Day. Debate on the legislation is expected to resume early next week. The key to the Senate deal was who would be on the conference committee to work out differences with a House passed immigration bill that focused only on enforcement with no provision for a guest worker program. Speaking to reporters earlier this week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns emphasized how important immigration reform is to agriculture. Johanns: "Seasonal workers are a part of agriculture. These are the workers that go out and do the harvest, the planting and all the hard work. In the state I come from, Nebraska, we were I think the largest beef processing state in the United States. If you went into a beef processing plant, easily 85 to 95% of the workers would be Hispanic." The Senate will consider legislation approved by the Judiciary Committee which calls for allowing illegal immigrants to work toward becoming legal permanent residents. The U.S House Appropriations Committee has approved an ag spending bill for fiscal 2007 that includes over 15 million dollars for funding Specialty Crop Block Grants. That would be double the amount approved for 2006. I'm Bob Hoff.