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Labor association leaders from Washington and North Carolina are not optimistic about immigration reform passing in a divided House and getting around Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Dan Wheat/Capital Press

Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association, Feb. 23.

Dan Wheat/Capital Press

Dan Fazio, director of WAFLA, Feb. 23.

YAKIMA, Wash. Chances of immigration reform passing Congress are not good, two farm labor leaders say.

Majority Republicans are divided in the House and Senate Democrats, while in the minority, can prevent nearly any bill from coming to a vote under Senate rules, said Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association, and Dan Fazio, director of WAFLA, formerly the Washington Farm Labor Association.

They spoke at WAFLAs annual labor conference at the Yakima Convention Center on Feb. 23.

Fazio and Wicker said they were recently in Washington, D.C., talking with Trump administration officials. Fifty-eight immigration bills were introduced in the first two weeks and none are going anywhere, Wicker said.

Democrats will run the same game on Trump that Republicans ran on Obama. Slow everything down. Gum everything up. You have to have 60 votes to bring anything to a vote in the Senate and I dont think it will happen, Wicker said.

I would predict that if Republicans dusted off the 2013 Senate bill and passed it now that Democrats (who supported it then) would vote against it because they wouldnt want Republicans and Trump to get credit for passing something that would be helpful, he said.

Fazio said House Republicans are divided between moderate conservatives and Tea Party conservatives and that the only way to bring them together is to pass House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlattes bills of the last Congress. HR 1772 for E-verify (electronic verification of employment eligibility) is supported by Tea Party Republicans, and moderate conservatives liked HR 1773, an ag guestworker bill that WAFLA supported.

You need both bills to bring Republicans together, Fazio said.

Chances of getting a bill out of the House are very small and its harder to get a bill through the Senate, he said.

There is no one out here to help you out of this tremendous labor shortage but yourselves. The closer you get to D.C., the more they drink the Kool-Aid and think something will get done, Fazio said.

But while Fazio believes nothing will happen legislatively to grant illegal immigrants worker status or improve the H-2A-visa guestworker program, he said E-verify will happen and will devastate many people (growers) in this room.

The best hope for anything helping growers is Trump administration reform of H-2A, he said. The Bush administration improved H-2A right before President George W. Bush left office and the Obama administration quickly reversed the reforms, he said. The Bush reforms, among other things, allowed small farms to get certification for H-2A workers, Fazio has said.

Trump could improve the program by lessening regulations, allowing it to work more smoothly, lowering the wage threshold and allowing growers to charge a reasonable rate for housing they have to provide, he said.

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Pessimism on immigration reform - Capital Press