New farm labor: inmates

BOISE — Potatoes are worth gold to Idaho's economy, but that's not why an armed guard oversees red T-shirted workers at the SunGlo packing plant located deep in tuber country.

Workers from Mexico have become more scarce, so the Sugar City, Idaho-based company's managers have a different source of employees: prison.

"We've gone as far as hiring the college students just to get through," Tom Sessions, a supervisor at SunGlo, told The Associated Press on Friday. "We got rid of that and got the inmates."

Idaho isn't alone in shoring up farmworker shortages with convicts. Colorado started a program this year.

States using inmates to augment crews picking fruits and vegetables highlight a reality in agricultural America: Hispanic workers are in tight supply. Jobs in the construction economy lure them from the farms, and the intensifying spotlight on illegal immigration along America's southern border has cut the number of prospective laborers willing to come north.

A comprehensive immigration reform bill pushed by President Bush collapsed Thursday in the U.S. Senate.

Still, some Western lawmakers now say they'll try to resurrect an "AgJobs" provision of Bush's plan that could open the way to legal status for those migrants who work in U.S. agriculture and fulfill certain conditions. They aim to combine the provision with Bush's $4 billion plan to enforce border security.

"I started immediately seeing if it would be possible to put together a border enforcement package along with a guest worker program for American agriculture," said U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, long an advocate of the guest-worker plan. "Following the Fourth of July break, I'll explore the possibility of doing that in Congress."

Craig was among supporters of Bush's bill, which fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to stay alive.

Among Northwest senators, Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington state voted with Craig.

While Sens. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Gordon Smith , R-Oregon, opposed the measure, both are more likely to support a scaled-back initiative that excludes controversial provisions some lawmakers said amounted to amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens.

Smith, who owns a frozen foods company, sponsored a 1999 AgJobs bill. It would have given permanent resident status to farmworkers who'd worked here for five years.

"The senator has said Congress needs to act first on border enforcement, then turn to a clearer path to citizenship — and a jobs program that meets the needs of the economy," R.C. Hammond, a spokesman for Smith in Washington, D.C., told the AP when asked about the guest-worker program.

Crapo co-sponsored Smith's legislation eight years ago.