† The Senate Goes Out Of Its Way To Create Jobs That Americans Won’t Do: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Reps. Adam Putnam (R-FL) and Howard Berman (D-CA) re-introduced The Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits, and Security (AgJOBS) Act in the Senate and House, respectively. A similar agricultural guest-worker measure died in Congress in 2007, The Miami Herald reports :

A former opponent of the agricultural guest-worker proposal, Feinstein now says it is needed to keep farms in business. The legislation combines streamlining of the existing but infrequently used H-2A guest-worker program with a legalization plan for farm workers already in the United States illegally.

"There is a farm emergency in this country," Feinstein said in a half-hour Senate speech, and "most of it is caused by the absence of farm labor."

The illegal immigrant farm workers could attain temporary legal status after meeting certain criteria, including a commitment to keep working in agriculture for several years. Eventually, they could apply to become U.S. citizens.

"There are very few Americans who are willing to take the jobs in a hot field, doing backbreaking labor," Feinstein said, "and that's just a fact."

The Immigration Policy Center (the research arm of the pro-illegal immigration nonprofit advocacy group American Immigration Law Foundation) recently released its “Facts About Farmworkers,” which cites these statistics “at the intersection of immigration policy and agriculture”:

According to agricultural labor economist James Holt, less than 2% of the U.S. workforce is engaged in farm work. However, more than 550,000 U.S. farmers hire workers to fill more than 3 million agricultural jobs each year. Because many of these agricultural jobs are seasonal, the 3 million jobs are filled by 2.5 million workers. …

According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS), the percentage of agricultural workers who reported that they were unauthorized has increased dramatically in the last two decades, rising from 7% in Fiscal Year (FY) 1989, to 16% in FY 1990-91, to 28% in FY 1992-93. In the most recently published NAWS survey from FY 2001-02, 53% of all seasonal agricultural workers admitted they were not authorized to work in the U.S. However, many experts suggest that the number may actually be closer to 75%.

GovTrack has not posted the text of the proposed legislation as of this writing, but Los Angeles Chronicle offers this summary:

AgJOBS is a bipartisan, compromise bill that is the result of years of negotiations among farmworkers, growers, and Members of Congress. The legislation has two parts: 1) an earned legalization program for unauthorized farmworkers who meet certain eligibility requirements; and 2) a revision of the H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program. Numerous organizations from across the political spectrum believe that the bill is necessary to create a stable agricultural workforce, improve the lives of farmworkers, and give employers access to the workers they need.

Capital Press, a trade newspaper for farmers and ranchers, notes that the proposed legislation has bipartisan support in the House (the 26 co-sponsors include 11 Republicans among them, including Reps. George Radanovich and Devin Nunes of CA), but that all of the co-sponsors in the Senate are Dems.

The New York Times, natch, is all for giving forged documented aliens amnesty:

Because it’s hard to find Americans willing to endure the heat, cold and misery of stooping in the fields - or the low wages - growers overwhelmingly use undocumented workers. An estimated 75 percent or more of the agricultural work force is here illegally. …

The bill helps to bolster labor rights, while also making it easier for growers to hire more temporary immigrant wor kers — after advertising and recruiting for Americans. Most critical, it includes a path to legal status and eventual citizenship for undocumented workers if they have clean records and pay fines and back taxes. …

It’s a model compromise, mixing pro-business pragmatism with a commitment to protecting workers - future Americans - who do some of the country’s most vital yet difficult jobs.

While the requirement to give dibs to Americans for these low-skilled jobs is laudable (see the next item), make no mistake about it, this bill is as much about granting amnesty to illegal aliens as it is to get people in the orchards to pick fruit before it rots, because it would legalize not only the farmworkers themselves, but also their nonworking family members. ‘Nuff said.

† Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too: Froma Harrop, a columnist for The Providence Journal worries that the recession has “ravaged” the most vulnerable Americans, and demolishes the central argument of the pro-amnesty crowd - that legalizing forged documented aliens will improve wages and working conditions overall:

Unemployment stands at just over 4 percent for college graduates but at nearly 15 percent for those lacking high-school diplomas. In poor black neighborhoods, it's around 30 percent and approaching Great Depression levels. …

Even in good times, the large presence of undocumented workers hurts our low-skilled natives and legal immigrants. Given today's broken economy, it would seem unconscionable not to address the situation. …

[Y]ou can't get around basic labor economics. From heart surgeon to street sweeper, every worker is subject to the law of supply and demand. The more people there are after the same number of jobs, the less anyone has to pay them.

The United States accepts 2 million legal immigrants a year, more than the rest of the world combined. No American has to apologize for drawing the line at illegal immigration.

Our working poor deserve the same protections against unfair competition that our doctors get. And in this economy, their need has grown desperate.

Harrop advocates E-Verify, which can determine a workers’ immigration status quickly and accurately, as a viable alternative to “scenes of ICE agents hauling away poor foreigners in handcuffs":
 

Westat, an independent researcher, found that E-Verify cleared 96 percent of employees within 5 seconds. Less than one half of 1 percent was not verified because of errors in the Social Security database.

Advocates of open borders - both defenders of illegal immigration and cheap-labor businesses - have run a campaign to demonize E-Verify precisely because it does the job.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Forget unresolved anger, fear of spiders and existential Angst. The New York Times reports that mental health professionals are spending more time talking about career-related issues with their patients than mending broken psyches:

Sessions are often becoming a mosaic of traditional therapy, loosely defined as more process-oriented and focused on the past, and of coaching, which tends to be more goal- and behavior-oriented.

“In many of my sessions we role-play networking, how to talk about skills and accomplishments, and how to get a raise in this market,” says Robert C. Chope, a professor of counseling at San Francisco State University and president of the employment counseling division of the American Counseling Association. …

Employment-related psychology was once viewed as “the most boring topic in psychology,” Mr. Chope said. “It used be seen as not ‘real’ mental health work.” Now there is more recognition that job issues “have a huge mental health component,” he said, and a “stronger move to understand the context of jobs, toxic co-workers and the ramifications of massive layoffs.” …

But don’t mistake career counseling for career coaching. Mr. Chope said “career counseling is what you seek when you say to yourself, ‘I’m an engineer and now I want to be a physician,’ while career coaches work with individuals to market themselves, tweak their résumés, and land new jobs quickly.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Let Them Eat Steak!: Part III): Citing cost overruns and delays, the Defense Department is cutting its losses and walking away from its $13 billion contract with contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. for a fleet of new White House helicopters, reports The Wall Street Journal:

The government has spent more than $3 billion so far, but Pentagon officials would rather start fresh. …

The Navy, which is charged with the program, now must come up with alternative plans within the next 30 days to replace the current fleet of ageing Sikorsky helicopters. Mr. Gates has said he wants a cheaper option. Until then, the government will budget more money on keeping the existing helicopters in flying shape.

Lockheed won the prestigious contract in 2005, but wrestled with technical challenges and the government's evolving specifications in its attempt to turn an essentially off-the-shelf helicopter design from Finmeccanica SpA.'s AgustaWestland into a war-ready flying limousine with Air Force One-like communications systems. A first batch of helicopters is effectively done, which has prompted some lawmakers to advocate buying these simpler versions instead for the contracts original price of about $6 billion. …

The government is now trying to figure out what to do with those helicopters, according to the Navy.

Putting the completed copters into service seems a reasonable compromise, and will buy the Navy time to assess its options going forward.

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Taking An Arm And A Leg): Jurors convicted Ernest Nelson, 51, of eight counts, including grand theft and tax evasion for his part in a $1.5 million scheme to plunder cadavers donated to UCLA's medical school and selling the parts to unsuspecting medical research companies, reports The Associated Press:

Nelson "was willing to go into a willed body program and cut up body parts for his own personal financial gain," prosecutor Marisa Zarate said after the verdict. …

Prosecutors said Nelson and Henry Reid, the former director of UCLA's Willed Body Program, devised the scam in 1999. …

Reid has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit grand theft and was sentenced to more than four years in prison.

The scandal led to the suspension of UCLA's cadaver program for a year in 2004 and forced the University of California system to examine its donation rules.

The school said it instituted procedures to prevent future abuses, including tracking systems for the bodies.