AgJOBS Stopped for Now

The Senate voted today on the cloture votes on AgJOBS and we did not get the 60 votes we needed to stop a filibuster on AgJOBS. This means that AgJOBS will not be voted on as an amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill. Many Senators preferred not to include AgJOBS and other immigration amendments on the appropriations bill.

But we did get a majority in favor of AgJOBS, a vote of 53-45 (really 55 votes because Durbin and Obama were absent but would have voted for us). Another good piece of news is that the (negative) Chambliss guestworker proposal only got 21 votes.

We're disappointed but not done. AgJOBS is still an important opportunity for farm workers to win improvements in their living and working conditions. There is still a coalition of more than 500 organizations supporting the bill. There will be efforts to figure out what happened and why, and next steps.

There may be other opportunities to pass AgJOBS and we will let you know as they develop. Thank you very much for all your help.


................................................................
NFWM welcomes your tax-deductible donations to sustain our work in support of farm workers as they organize for empowerment, justice and equality. For more information go to http://www.nfwm.org/help/donate.shtml If you want to stop receiving email updates from NFWM just reply to this message with "unsubscribe" in the subject line. Thank you for your commitment to farm worker justice! We look forward to working together. Ginnie Druhe National Farm Worker Ministry 314-726-6470 http://www.nfwm.org