OVERHAUL SET FOR GUEST-WORKER PLAN

 Notes from the L. A. Times—February 6, 2008

 

            The revised regulations, many months in the works, would make it easier for growers to bring foreign workers to the United States and could alleviate the critical farmworker shortage largely caused by the U.S. crackdown on illegal border crossings.  After Congress failed to overhaul emigration laws, last summer, the White House announced a 26-step plan to tackle immigration issues through administrative fixes.  Altering the legal-farmworker program would mark the most significant achievement to date.

            The greatest effect would be in California, the nation’s largest agricultural state. Some farmers have had to plow rotting crops back into their fields for lack of workers at harvest time.  But lawmakers and growers said Tuesday that more than an administrative fix was needed to solve the state’s chronic farm labor shortages.  The proposed changes to the program which would relax the requirements for the H-2A visas for foreign farmworkers come against a backdrop of growing anger over illegal immigration and tension among the presidential candidates over the issue.

            Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was skeptical that the proposed changes would make much difference noting that only about 2% for farm jobs are now filled through the notoriously bureaucratic program.  “Growers frequently cannot get labor through the H2A program when they need it.  Simply tweaking regulations can’t fix that problem,” she said. “I’m afraid that these H-2A modifications make a bad situation worse—by lowering wage sates and undermining existing labor protections for U.S, and foreign farmworkers.” 

“The key to real reform is AgJOBS.  Growers support it.  Workers support it.  And bipartisan majorities in Congress support it,” Feinstein said.  “It would provide incentives for a stable, reliable agricultural workforce and provide long-term H-2A reform.”

 

WHITE HOUSE MOVES TO EASE GUEST WORKER PROGRAM

                  Notes from the N.Y. Times—February 7, 2008

 

Elaine L. Chao, labor secretary, says that as many as 800,000 current farm workers, or about 2/3rds of the agricultural work force, are illegal immigrants.  “There simply are not enough U.S. workers to fill the hundreds of thousands of agricultural jobs in the country.” Farmers have avoided the current H2A program because it is so sluggish. It currently supplies only about 75,000 foreign workers out of 1.2 million farm workers employed at peak harvest, or less than 2%. 

“We welcome any reforms that will help family farmers hire people who are legally able to work in the United States,” said Doug Mosebar, president of the California Farm Bureau, a growers’ organization.  Mr. Mosebar said Congress should pass legislation known as AgJobs,which would provide a path to legal status for illegal immigrants to resolve farm labor instability.  Advocates for farm workers said the wage rates proposed under the new rules would be lower than current pay.