In 1960, Edward R. Murrow shocked the nation with his famous television documentary on the exploitation of farmworkers in America. His report, “Harvest of Shame,” led to the repeal of the bracero program in 1964, under which 4.6 million Mexican workers were brought to this country to harvest U.S. crops under abusive conditions.

Yet, today, there are those who call for the creation of yet another large-scale foreign agricultural worker program. I oppose such a program. We should learn from our mistakes, not repeat them.

Inevitably such a program would encounter illegal immigration. After spending billions of taxpayer dollars to strengthen the Border Patrol to keep illegal immigrants out, it makes no sense to instruct INS to cut a gaping hole in the fence, and look the other way as illegal immigrants pour through.

Foreign agricultural worker programs create patterns of illegal migration that cannot be stopped. The first workers to come here may be legal foreign workers with temporary work visas, but they create an endless chain of illegal migration as their relatives, neighbors, and friends.

As Professor Philip Martin, a leading agricultural labor economist, has often stated, when it comes to temporary foreign worker programs, “There is nothing more permanent than a temporary worker.”

The last time such proposals were debated in 1995, President Clinton announced his opposition to misguided efforts in Congress to institute such a program. He said, “We have worked hard to reduce illegal immigration and have made great progress. . . . To allow so-called temporary workers to cross the border now would undermine all the success we have achieved.”

Earlier this year, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman emphasized the President’s concerns and told Congress that if current bills are approved, she would recommend a veto by the President.

The late Barbara Jordan and her Commission on Immigration Reform unanimously concluded that creating such a program would be a “grievous mistake.”

In fact, every federal immigration commission in modern times has concluded that agricultural guestworker programs should not be expanded. The recent Commission on Immigration Reform, the Commission on Agricultural Workers in 1992 and the Hesburgh Commission in 1981 all reached that conclusion.

The bracero program did not really end in 1964. It established a permanent path of illegal immigration, and three and a half decades later, we are still paying the price.

A comprehensive study of bilateral issues by the United States and Mexico completed just last year put it this way: [H]istory has shown that U.S.-sanctioned Bracero recruitment in the 1950s oriented many Mexican workers toward the U.S. labor market instead of toward local jobs and development. This began a tradition of migration, raised expectations, and set into place a baseline of individuals and families who would eventually reside permanently in the U.S. Although meant to be a temporary supply of workers, an unintended consequence was to create a resident population.

An additional major reason to reject such efforts is the impossibility, as a practical matter, of enforcing fair rules and preventing abuses of both foreign workers who come here and American farm-workers.

In recent decades, Congress has enacted major legislation to improve the plight of farmworkers and to outlaw past abuses. In 1986, when Congress created the current “H-2A” guest-worker program, it enacted standards to protect these workers.

But, as the record shows, these protections have been widely ignored, and the farm-workers are paying the price.

In addition, under the current small agricultural worker program, employers are required to recruit for U.S. workers first. Study after study finds that there is no shortage of farm-workers in the United States.

As the General Accounting Office concluded last December, “A sudden widespread farm labor shortage requiring the importation of large numbers of foreign workers is unlikely to occur in the near future. There appears to be no national agricultural labor shortage now.”

The high unemployment rate for U.S. farm-workers clearly proves that foreign workers are not needed. The overall unemployment rate is only 4.3 percent, but joblessness among U.S. farm workers remains in double digits. In California, where half of all foreign agricultural workers work, the state government reports that the unemployment rate for U.S. farm-workers in January was 16.5 percent -- almost four times the national unemployment rate. Last year, many counties in Florida and Texas suffered farm-worker unemployment rates of more than 20 percent. Yet, employers from these states want to bring in more foreign farm-workers, instead of hiring available U.S. workers to do the job.

GAO also found that often worker protections under the program are also difficult to enforce. As a result temporary foreign workers are underpaid and other requirements are not met.

The result is to undermine the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers and it gives employers who violate the law an unfair advantage over those who follow it.

Clearly, there are steps that can be taken by the Department of Labor and INS to make the program more efficient -- both for employers and for workers. GAO identified a number of such steps in its report. I understand that the Administration will soon be announcing new efficiency measures to make the current program more responsive to employers with legitimate needs.

Under these circumstances, I believe that legislation to lower standards and expand the foreign workers program is unnecessary and harmful to our national goals of curbing illegal immigration and protecting U.S. workers.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.