79R5433 CLE-D


By:  Chavez                                                     H.C.R. No. 69 



HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
	WHEREAS, The United States Congress has an important 
opportunity to help Texas agricultural producers stabilize their 
transient workforce and immigrant workers improve their working 
conditions and wages; and
	WHEREAS, Members of the 109th U.S. Congress will consider the 
Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act of 2005 
(AgJOBS) to revise and expand the current agricultural guest worker 
program that allows U.S. growers to import temporary labor from 
abroad; and
	WHEREAS, AgJOBS would confer temporary U.S. resident status 
on an undocumented farm worker who is otherwise admissible to the 
U.S. under Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and 
who applies for such status during the application period and can 
establish both the worker's entry into the U.S. at least two years 
before the bill's enactment and the worker's agricultural 
employment in the U.S. for at least 575 hours or 100 work days, 
whichever is less, during any 12 consecutive months within a 
specified 18-month period; and
	WHEREAS, A farm worker who earns temporary U.S. resident 
status under AgJOBS could receive an adjustment to permanent U.S. 
resident status if the worker meets certain requirements, including 
performing at least 2,060 hours, or 360 work days, of agricultural 
employment in the U.S. within a specified six-year period; and
	WHEREAS, AgJOBS is important to farmers and other 
agricultural employers because it reduces much of the "red tape" in 
the current agricultural guest worker program, helping to ensure 
that employers can find legal workers at the times the workers are 
needed; and
	WHEREAS, AgJOBS is a priority for undocumented workers who, 
by some estimates, comprise 75 to 85 percent of the agricultural 
workforce, because it eliminates their reason for seeking illegal 
entry into the U.S. with the aid of unscrupulous smugglers, via 
hazardous transportation, or across inhospitable terrain, and it 
allows them to look for the best wages and working conditions the 
way employees of other industries do; and
	WHEREAS, Another consideration for enacting AgJOBS is its 
contribution to homeland security; AgJOBS will enhance the safety 
and security of our food supply by revealing who is planting and 
harvesting our crops, where the workers come from, and where they 
are working; and
	WHEREAS, When an earlier version of AgJOBS was considered by 
the 108th Congress in 2004, an accompanying letter of support was 
signed by numerous Texas agriculture associations, including the 
Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc., Texas Produce Association, 
and Texas Vegetable Association; and
	WHEREAS, Other organizations that support the legislation 
include the American Farm Bureau, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, United 
Farm Workers of America, American Federation of Labor and Congress 
of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and the National 
Association of State Departments of Agriculture; now, therefore, be 
it
	RESOLVED, That the 79th Legislature of the State of Texas 
hereby join more than 400 national, state, and local organizations 
in requesting that the U.S. Congress enact the Agricultural Job 
Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act of 2005 to significantly 
reform immigration law as it relates to agriculture; and, be it 
further
	RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official 
copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to 
the speaker of the house of representatives and the president of the 
senate of the United States Congress, and to all the members of the 
Texas delegation to the congress with the request that this 
resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a 
memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.