BACKGROUND

The Replenishment Agricultural Worker program, known as RAW, was created by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration law in two decades. RAW was basically intended as an insurance program for Western growers concerned that hundreds of thousands of workers who obtained amnesty under the 1986 law would desert the fields for better jobs in other industries. But program applicants will be tapped only should the U.S. departments of Labor and Agriculture determine that there is a shortage of field hands. U.S. authorities are scheduled to make such findings annually during the four-year life of the RAW initiative.