Page 4A
East Oregonian
Friday, August 10, 2018
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Lack of guestworker bill
leaves farmers hanging
Caught up in the swirl of confusion
surrounding the immigration issue
on Capitol Hill is a guestworker visa
program that serves as a lifeline for
many U.S. farmers.
Called the H-2A visa, it allows
farmers to bring in guestworkers from
outside the U.S. To qualify to bring H-2A
workers to their farm to harvest fruits or
vegetables, prune trees or do other work,
farmers first have to advertise the jobs to
Americans. Once they can’t get enough
domestic workers, they can apply for
foreign workers, but they have to pay to
get the paperwork through the federal
government. They then must pay to
get the workers to the farm and back to
their home country, and provide housing
while they’re here. They also must pay
the H-2A workers a higher minimum
wage — $14.12 an hour in Oregon —
established by the federal government.
This is to prevent farmers from using
“low-cost” H-2A workers to displace
domestic workers.
No problem there, since finding
enough domestic workers is all but
impossible as tree fruit and other
plantings increase. The growing U.S.
economy also attracts domestic workers
to the construction industry and other
jobs that offer year-round employment
and fringe benefits. All of that forces
farmers to look overseas for help through
the H-2A visa. In Washington alone, the
use of H-2A visas is up nearly 60 percent
this year to 30,000 guestworkers.
The main reason H-2A is an
issue is its high costs and the slow
federal processing that farmers have
encountered, especially during the Barack
Obama administration.
But beyond that, H-2A workers
are limited in the amount of time
they can be in the U.S. That means
they are unavailable for year-round
jobs at dairies and other agricultural
occupations that are not seasonal.
In the meantime, the agricultural
foreign guestworker issue was split off
from the immigration issue as the U.S.
House tried to get its arms around the big
EO Media Group file photo
Growers have increasingly turned to foreign guestworkers in recent years because
of labor shortages, but Congress has delayed action on improving or replacing H-2A
visas with a better program.
picture. An alternative program, the H-2C
program, would be cheaper and provide
year-round guestworkers, but set a limit
low enough to make farmers worry that
they would come up short. After all, the
whole point of a guestworker program
is to make sure farmers have enough
workers, not limit them. Even though the
limit would increase over time, it was
seen as a poison pill by some agricultural
groups that depend heavily on handwork.
The result was the U.S. House
fumbled another important issue, to the
detriment of U.S. farmers. Though some
in the House continued to work to get an
improved guestworker program passed,
others appeared to be intent on holding
off until after the November elections.
That’s too bad. It’s not like Congress
has a sterling record for incumbents to
run on. One would think that passing a
bill to help U.S. farmers harvest the food
they need to feed Americans would be a
top priority among elected leaders.
Apparently, though, they can wait until
after the election. But U.S. farmers can’t.
OTHER VIEWS
The outrage over
Sarah Jeong
I
YOUR VIEWS
Pendleton animal control
and a sustainable budget
It looks like the proposal for a new
tax by the Pioneer Humane Society,
PAWS, is dead in the water. This tax was
deemed necessary since many unfunded
organizations like PAWS commonly over-
rely on volunteers, donations, and have
an insatiable appetite to expand services
beyond what available resources permit.
Evidently due to burnout, volunteers are
just getting too hard to find. The group’s
proposal would have enabled them to hire
more paid administrators to make up for
those volunteers lost to burnout.
Suggestions by PAWS that the city do
more ignore the facts that their facilities
are provided free of charge by the city and
include a monthly donation of $1,300.
The city’s original agreement with PAWS
included a provision to assume the
city’s animal impoundment function, a
commitment they’ve not honored. They
have instead elected to receive animals
from outside the city, county, and state.
Critics of the city reference the amount
Hermiston, a larger city, provides for their
program. They fail to mention that the
Humane Society in Hermiston operates the
impoundment and licensing programs for
their city.
I suspect PAWS will be asking for
additional funding at a future city council
meeting, amid threats of shuttering the
program entirely. With a new budget
already in place, that means cuts to other
programs if their request is approved. I
hope I don’t start hearing “it’s only” or
“I’m sure the city manager can find you
something somewhere.” The reluctance
of the city manager and council to say
“no” and just “kicking the can down the
road” when it comes to making difficult
decisions perpetuates their inability to
adopt a sustainable budget. Personally
I’d rather they worked on our streets than
waste money on projects like moving the
Eighth Street Bridge to Main Street or
renovating the Rivoli.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the
East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and
not necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
So if you feel obligated to care for
every unwanted pet in the city, county,
and beyond, avoid cuts in other programs.
Then open your hearts and wallets, and
volunteer at PAWS. It certainly sounds like
they need your help and donations. The
city has been more than generous. By the
way, I do have a living, breathing pet with
four legs that does not live in a cage or
disturb my neighbors, and she’s spayed.
Rick Rohde
Pendleton
Sanctuary law affirms
Oregon’s values
Walk through any school and you’ll see
plenty of signage about safe and respectful
behavior. We tell our kids to act kindly
towards others, be respectful and stay
safe. The same lessons are reinforced by
families and friends at home and in the
community. Whenever I look around at
my adult peers and see what’s happening
in my community I wonder how we’ve
gotten to where we are. What went wrong?
Business owners and politicians are
linked to white supremacist groups.
Latin American immigrants are verbally
and physically assaulted while at work.
Children are losing their parents to
deportation.
Swastikas, hate speech and anti-
immigrant messages appear in graffiti,
propaganda and social media.
This fall, we will have a chance to
affirm our values of kindness, public safety
and respect for human life. Measure 105
will ask voters to decide whether the state
should keep ORS 191A.820, commonly
known as Oregon’s sanctuary law. Voting
no on Measure 105 will protect sanctuary
for all, affirm our values and ensure that
Oregon remains a safe, respectful place for
all who call this great state home. Now is
the time to get to work. Register to vote.
Reach out to your friends and family. Vote
no on 105.
Trevor Whitbread
Hermiston
n March, a liberal furor erupted
axel by tweeting a line from the
musical “Hamilton”: “Immigrants:
when The Atlantic magazine
They get the job done.” Left-wing
briefly hired Kevin Williamson,
social media went berserk over
a conservative writer with
this alleged “othering” of Nagasu,
National Review. Several years
who was born in California to
earlier, Williamson had written a
immigrant parents.
short tweet in which he seemed to
By contrast, the left has been
suggest that women who obtain
Bret
nothing if not aggressive in its
abortions should be hanged.
Stephens defense of Jeong. That’s the
Though he insists this is far from
Comment
right thing to do, but it’s also
his real view, his fate was sealed
rank hypocrisy coming from
when it turned out he had said
many of the same people who loudly
something similar in a podcast. He was
demanded the ouster of Williamson,
fired almost immediately.
Weiss or, well, me. The tests for who gets
I defended Williamson at the time,
to work at publications like The Times
but not on account of any potential
or The Atlantic ought to revolve around
misinterpretation of his abortion views.
considerations of liveliness, integrity,
My main point was that we should be
maturity and talent. When ideology
judged on the totality of our work, and
becomes the litmus test, we’re on the road
that we are more than just a collage of
to Pravda.
quotes from our social-media history or
My own misgivings about Jeong’s
some foolish utterances from the near or
tweets have less to do with their
distant past.
“Your critics show bad faith when they substance than with their often snarky
tone, occasional meanness and sheer
treat an angry tweet or a flippant turn of
number: 103,000 over some nine years,
phrase as proof of moral incorrigibility,”
averaging about 31 tweets a day. (Donald
I wrote. “Let he who is without a
Trump averages only 11.)
bad tweet, a crap sentence or even a
But that’s the way we live now —
deplorable opinion cast the first stone.”
unfiltered — and many of us, including
Not surprisingly, some on the left
me, have been late to appreciate Twitter’s
pilloried me for that argument. So allow
narcotic power to bring out the worst in
me to apply precisely the same logic in
ourselves. Undigested thoughts. Angry
defense of my soon-to-be colleague at
retorts. Jokes that don’t land. Points
The New York Times, Korean-American
made in haste. All the mental burps and
technology writer Sarah Jeong, who is
inner screams that wisely used to be left
joining the editorial board with her own
unspoken — or, if spoken, little heard and
extensive history of unfortunate tweets.
Among these: “White men are bull—”; seldom recorded.
I’ve spent the last few days reading
“#CancelWhitePeople”; “oh man it’s kind
some of Jeong’s longer-form journalism.
of sick how much joy I get out of being
It’s consistently smart and interesting
cruel to old white men” and “f— white
and as distant from some of her more
women lol.” She has also bashed police,
notorious social-media output as a brain is
called for censoring a fellow journalist,
from a bottom. But you’ll struggle to find
and believed the 2014 University of
Virginia rape hoax, in the course of which her articles on an internet search, because
she lashed out at “white men” and “white her serious work is overwhelmed by the
controversy her tweets have generated.
college boys.”
Is it ultimately her fault for writing
We should call many of these tweets
those ugly tweets? Yes. Does it represent
for what they are: racist. I’ve seen
the core truth of who she is? I doubt
some acrobatic efforts to explain why
it. Anyone who has been the victim of
Jeong’s tweets should be treated as
the social-media furies knows just how
“quasi-satirical,” hyperbolical and a
distorting and dishonest those furies
function of “social context.” But the
can be. I’m routinely described on
criteria for racism is either objective
social media as an Arab-hating, climate-
or it’s meaningless: If liberals get to
denying, pedophile apologist. It’s
decide for themselves who is or isn’t a
enough for me that my family, friends
racist according to their political lights,
conservatives will be within their rights to and employer know I’m none of those
things. God save us all when those pillars
ignore them.
crumble in the face of our new culture of
Also worth noting is the leftist double
denunciation.
standard when it comes to social-media
———
transgressions. In February, my centrist
Bret Stephens is a columnist for the
colleague Bari Weiss celebrated U.S.
figure skater Mirai Nagasu’s historic triple New York Times.
The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the
newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual
services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Letters must be signed by the author and include the
city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published.
Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.