The Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act, a bill to help immigrant farm workers establish permanent legal residency, was blocked for consideration last week by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R- TN).  The Wall Street Journal reports that even though Frist denies his action was at the request of the Bush Administration, other legislators have confirmed that the White House wanted to prevent the bill from reaching the President’s desk.

The center of this debate is how far the government should go to accept workers who entered this country illegally, but whose jobs are vital to the economy. Bush’s own immigration proposals received criticism from the right this year, and the White House fears that this bill comes too close to granting amnesty to illegal aliens. 

On the other hand, by delaying consideration of this bill, President Bush and Republicans risk losing Hispanic votes.  Arturo Rodriguez, president of the Farm Workers union, says that this delay is “a clear signal that something is wrong in the top leadership of the Bush administration.  If they can’t deal with this, how will they deal with anything on immigration?”

This proposal has received interest from the agriculture industry, strong bipartisan support in the Senate, as well as the backing from the United Farm Workers Union and the American Farm Bureau. Advocates of the bill say that giving migrant workers a path to achieve legal status, but not citizenship, will give growers a more dependable source of labor.  Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, if elected president, has committed to signing the legislation “within minutes.”

Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho), estimates that 80% of the immigrant farm workers in U.S. fields today are undocumented, illegal aliens.  The Palm Beach Post reports that Florida agriculture, a $7 billion-a-year industry, relies on an estimated 300,000 undocumented farm workers.