When Rep. Raul Ruiz was growing up in the Coachella Valley, he lived in a trailer near the agricultural fields where both of his immigrant parents worked. He shared a bed with his brother that doubled as a table during the daytime, while his father fixed farm equipment and his mother picked crops.

"I've seen the hard labor that my parents and neighbors went through growing up as a child, where they worked day after day with minimum rest," said the Democratic congressman. "The amount of work these people put into the agriculture industry so America benefits and is able to eat —and help our local economy—is incredible."

An estimated 1.2 to 1.75 million farmworkers toil in America's fields, planting and picking the food the rest of the country eats. Farmers rely heavily on migrant laborers to do work Americans aren't inclined to. The Department of Labor's National Agricultural Worker Survey estimates 48% of agricultural workers are migrants who lack any authorization or legal status.

Although Republicans and Democrats agree agriculture is a key industry in the national economy, immigration has been one of the country's most contentious issues and gridlock on agricultural labor bills has plagued Congress for decades.

In December, while the impeachment inquiry dominated headlines, the House of Representatives passed its first agricultural labor bill in more than 30 years. Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s H.R. 5038, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, proposes creating a new temporary legal status for currently unauthorized farmworkers and offering a pathway for them to earn permanent legal status.

After extensive lobbying and negotiations among Republicans, Democrats, farmworker unions and farmers' groups, the bill passed with all House Democrats, including Ruiz, and about one-sixth of House Republicans voting in favor, including half of California's Republican delegation.

The bill now faces uncertainty as it moves to the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will decide whether to bring it to the floor for a vote when Congress reconvenes in 2020.

The stakes are perhaps highest for California among all states as the nation's breadbasket, which grows two-thirds of the nation's fruits and nuts and one-third of its vegetables. Its agricultural industry produces more than $43 billion of goods and more than $20 billion of exports annually. With more than 420,000 farmworkers, California farms employ about 30% of the nation's agricultural labor force. A 2013 California Research Bureau report found 79% of the state's farmworkers were born in Mexico.

The legislation proposes creating a temporary "Certified Agricultural Worker" status for immigrants who work in the farming industry for more than 100 days per year. It would require them to

submit to background checks

commit to working in agriculture for at least eight years

file taxes and

pay a $1,000 penalty for crossing into the county without authorization in order to be eligible for green cards.

The bill also proposes reforming the criteria for H-2A visas, which the government issues to more than 134,000 seasonal "guest workers" needed annually to compensate for a shortage of domestic workers interested in working in agriculture.

If passed by the Senate and signed by the president, the legislation instructs the Department of Labor to issue an additional 20,000 H-2A visas for year-round use for up to three years. Half of the new H-2A visas would be earmarked for the dairy industry, which lobbied extensively for the bill.

In a press release, Lofgren, D-San Jose, said the bill "offers stability for American farms by providing a path to legal status for farmworkers," and, "modernizes an outdated system for temporary workers.”

California — the country's breadbasket

In the Coachella Valley, citrus, dates, grapes and lettuce are harvested from mid-November through the end of March.

Ocean Mist Farms Vice President of Harvesting Art Barrientos said California farmers find the process of applying for H-2A visas to fulfill their labor needs onerous.

Ocean Mist owns farms in the Salinas Valley, the Imperial Valley, the Coachella Valley and elsewhere and uses 200 to 300 H-2A visas a year.

"Slowly but surely, we've seen a decline here in the last 10 years of domestic labor in agriculture. Most of us in the industry throughout California and elsewhere have started to rely more on the H-2A program, which at this point is the only avenue we can pursue to supplement the lack of labor in our industry," he said. "In the Coachella Valley, we compete with the hospitality industry for labor and within the industry, you have citrus dates and grapes competing for the same labor pool."

Ruiz said if enacted, the bill will decrease instability and uncertainty facing both undocumented farmworkers and their employers in Riverside County. The county's agricultural industry generates more than $1.3 billion annually in revenue, according to the Riverside County Agriculture Commission, and employs more than 19,000 workers with varying legal statuses at peak season, according to Growing Coachella Valley estimates.

"Providing protections for farmworkers and giving them peace of mind from deportation and separation from their families is also a concern for growers because they need a stable workforce to pick crops we have here in the eastern Coachella Valley in particular," he said.

Both Ruiz and Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, said the bill was a "win-win" for both farmers and farmworkers, but aren't sure how it'll fare in the Senate.

LaMalfa, a rice farmer whose district encompasses most of California north of Sacramento, said, that in California the crops produced still require intensive manual labor and can't be automated.

The bill won support from farmers' groups and the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) because it provided both farmers and farmworkers mutual benefits, LaMalfa said. Compromises on the number of visas to provide and the amount of years required to gain legal status were more about battles between Republicans and Democrats than farmers and farmworkers, he added, because of the polarization surrounding immigration-related policies.

'Amnesty' or 'earned status'?

LaMalfa didn't win over as many of his Republican colleagues as he'd hoped or anticipated. Some Senate Republicans have indicated to him that they'd sponsor a companion bill, but for many, the "A-word" puts up a polarizing roadblock, he said.

"The first thing that comes out is that 'A-word' — amnesty," LaMalfa said. "It's not a fair assessment to call what we're doing amnesty. There's too many pieces that require benchmarks for those who are already here."

When representatives discussed the bill on the House floor in December, Republicans argued that the bill's pathway to legal status was the kind of pathway to amnesty their party now opposes.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, whose district borders LaMalfa's, voted against the bill and said it "ignores enforcement and rewards anyone who has illegally crossed our borders with amnesty."

"It then rewards them with a preferential pathway to citizenship—allowing them to cut in line in front of every legal immigrant who has obeyed our laws, waited patiently in line and done everything our country has asked them," he said.

LaMalfa pushed back and said mandating farmworkers pay a fine and commit to years of manual labor doesn’t constitute amnesty the way the bill's detractors have suggested. He said it doesn't allow anyone to cut in line, as McClintock implied, because it only enables people to earn the right to apply for green cards, not citizenship directly.

Throughout his career, LaMalfa said he has advocated for border security and accountability regarding the country's immigration system and the bill's commitment to phasing in an E-Verify web-based security system to check farmworker legal status was much better than the current system governed by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.

That Reagan-era law forbids employers from hiring migrant workers without legal status or seasonal work authorization in an effort to rein in illegal border crossings, but it hasn't been enforced, LaMalfa said. Farmers have long argued current seasonal worker visas don't supply them with enough workers.

By not enforcing the law to the full extent and denying the agriculture industry the workers it needs, LaMalfa said the current system also exposes migrants who cross the border to serious danger.

"You can’t completely blame the worker because we asked for the worker to come here," he said.

LaMalfa said he's trying to be optimistic about the bill's prospects in the Senate. "You got goofy election-year politics, combined with the additional piece of impeachment. What're they going to do? I don't know," he said.

The House floor vote took place the same day as the judiciary committee began marking up the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, forcing representatives to scurry between the Capitol's Longworth and Rayburn buildings to vote.

Even though the bill's prospects are uncertain, LaMalfa said its passage in the House boosted his spirits during a tense time in Washington.

"It’s been pretty remarkable and shows you can get things done and do things when things are horribly divided," he said. "I think it’s just one of the things that makes it worth it to be a legislator. It's like, wow, finally, we're getting somewhere on things that are difficult."

The Visalia Times Delta's Joshua Yeager and the Salinas Californian's Kate Cimini contributed reporting.

Sam Metz covers politics. Reach him at samuel.metz@desertsun.com or on Twitter @metzsam.