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Chambliss to introduce bill today for farm guest workers

Washington — Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia will introduce legislation today that would grant legal immigrants temporary work visas and allow currently illegal immigrants to work for two years for American farms and other agricultural-related businesses.

Chambliss is among a number of Georgia Republicans in Congress pushing for some variety of immigration reform, though the GOP remains torn between corporate America's need for low-wage workers and the public's concerns over border security.

As chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Chambliss wants to establish a guest worker program that would allow farm workers to travel between a Mexico and the United States. Under the bill, they could remain for two years if their employers paid $3,000 for each worker to the federal government to cover documentation and other costs.

Legal immigrants, including those employed by meat processors, timber companies and landscaping firms, would be allowed to remain for 33 months before being sent home.

Chambliss' legislation would authorize state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws. And it would address border security by directing the Department of Homeland Security to draft a new plan to protect the border, establish 30 new border checkpoints, hire 1,250 border agents between 2007 and 2011 and establish 20 new detention centers with room for 200,000 people arrested on immigration charges.

Also pushing a bill is Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Marietta Republican. His legislation would require residents to prove they are U.S. citizens before they are allowed to register for federal elections, a measure intended to prevent illegal immigrants from voting.

Gingrey and Rep. Tom Price, a Republican from Roswell, also are backing a package of reforms that, among other things, would build a dozen 30-mile fences along the U.S.-Mexico border and deny automatic citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican, recently told a House subcommittee that illegal immigration is "a serious problem throughout the United States," including Georgia.