AgJOBS Codifies Indentured Servitude

Amnesty Legislation Has All the Earmarks of Indentured Servitude

WASHINGTON, DC –Today, a procedural vote is expected in the Senate on an amendment, offered by Senator Larry Craig, that grants amnesty to every illegal alien, along with his or her family, who can produce sufficient evidence to show, “as a matter of just and reasonable inference,” that the illegal alien performed agricultural work in the United States for as little as the equivalent of 2 ½ standard work weeks. 

“AgJOBS reinstitutes indentured servitude for illegal agricultural workers by requiring labor for a specified duration of time and substandard wages in return for a free passage into a new country,” said Roy Beck, Executive Director of NumbersUSA.  “I urge the Senate to open their eyes and reject this amnesty that will hurt both American and foreign workers.”

An indentured servant is an unfree laborer under contract to work for a specified amount of time for another person, often for low or no wages, in exchange for accommodation, food, other essentials and/or free passage in a new country. 

Section 101(a) of AgJOBS grants amnesty in the form of “temporary residence” to illegal aliens who worked at least 100 hours in agriculture between July 1, 2003 and December 31, 2004.  Section 101(c) permits these formerly illegal temporary residents to apply for adjustment to lawful permanent residence only if they perform at least 2,060 hours of agricultural work during the first six years after enactment.         

Section 101(c)(1)(C) says that, if temporary residents do not perform the requisite work and apply for permanent status within seven years of enactment, they are deportable.  AgJOBS permits employers of formerly illegal temporary residents to pay these workers as little as minimum wage.  It also freezes the “adverse effect wage rate” for H-2A workers at its January 1, 2003 level for three years, after which the wage rate may be increased by no more than the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index from two years prior. 

Indentured servitude was abolished in 1865, along with slavery, by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.   

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