Immigration Reality: Special report on illegal immigration - Entry into U.S. a game of chance for low-skilled workers

A good, rather detailed report, from the Sacremento (California) Bee, on how U.S. visa regulations, for green cards and for temporary work, make legal permanent immigration or legal, temporary migration for seasonal work so difficult that they promote illegal immgration.

Special report on illegal immigration: Entry into U.S. a game of chance for low-skilled workers - Sacramento Bee: "The government offers an unlimited number of one-year and three-year H-2A guest-worker visas for agriculture workers, but those visas must be sponsored by an employer -- and few farmers use them.

Through August of this year, only 34 of the estimated 40,900 full-time farmers and ranchers in California asked for worker visas through the H-2A guest-worker program.

Across the country, about 150,000 H-2A visas were issued last year — but most went to Arizona employers. Only 5,018 visas went to California employers, and fewer than 200 went to employers in the central San Joaquin Valley. By contrast, there are about 650,000 farmworkers in California alone — mostly illegal immigrants.

Many farmers say they don’t apply for the H-2A visas because they come with several strings attached. First, employers must advertise the available jobs to legal U.S. residents and prove that no one here will take them. Then farmers must pay the guest workers a government-regulated wage and provide free housing and transportation.

... For years, the farming lobby has tried unsuccessfully to alter the H-2A program through a bill dubbed AgJOBS. The bill would speed up the process of getting H-2A visas approved, let employers pay a housing allowance in lieu of free housing and loosen the government-regulated wage requirements." Nov. 20, 2010