February 17, 2010 – Los Angeles Times

New federal rules are a step in the right direction, but both labor and agriculture are behind the AgJOBS bill stalled in Congress.

In the last days of 2008, President George W. Bush’s administration gave a parting gift to agribusiness: The Labor Department rescinded certain hiring regulations and lowered minimum wages for temporary foreign workers, undoing labor protections that had been in place since 1988. For two decades, growers had maintained that those requirements, attached to H-2A visas for guest workers, had hindered their ability to keep a steady, reliable flow of workers in their fields and orchards. By contrast, labor unions argued that the provisions, passed during the Reagan administration, provided protections against unfair competition for American workers while safeguarding a foreign population subject to exploitation.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-agjobs18-2010feb18,0,1098123.story