We live in an era of deeply polarized politics. But anyone who gives it much thought is likely agree on this: Our nation’s agricultural economy would grind to a halt without farmworkers, nearly 400 thousand of whom leave their families in Mexico for the better part of each year to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops in the United States. The number of so-called guestworkers, here on a temporary work visa known as the H-2A, is growing rapidly. It’s likely to top half a million any year now. Many more farmworkers live year-round in the US, some with work authorization and some without. Because practically no US citizen is willing to do this work, nearly every one of America’s farmworkers is Latino.
And that’s about where the agreement ends.
There is deep disagreement on important matters such as how much farmworkers should be paid, how to protect them from human traffickers and sub-standard living and working conditions, and whether or not they are entitled to a path to citizenship.
Earlier this month, those questions were all on the table in Washinton, DC at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate. Congressional hearings don’t get media coverage like they used to, but I listened closely as five deeply knowledgeable witnesses gave testimony to Chairman Dick Durbin (a Democrat from Illinois, and also my uncle), Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (a Republican from South Carolina), and other members of the committee.
Three witnesses—two farm owners and an attorney—spoke on behalf of the growers who hire farmworkers. Two witnesses spoke on behalf of farmworkers. At the end of this post is a link to their written testimony and video coverage of the entire hearing.
Much of the debate centered on the nonimmigrant temporary work visa program known as the H-2A, written into law in 1986 as part of the landmark Immigration Reform and Control Act, or IRCA. Subject to a number of requirements, the H-2A program allows US growers to hire as many temporary seasonal workers as they need. The 35-year-old program is showing its age. Both growers and farmworker advocates have serious issues with it, issues they highlighted at the hearing.
Advocates called attention to the illegal recruitment fees many workers must pay, oftentimes putting them in debt to the farm labor contractor—an intermediary between grower and farmworker—who recruited them. By tying an H-2A contract to a single employer, the program generally denies workers job mobility. It also makes them reluctant to speak up about poor working or living conditions for fear of losing their jobs, conditions that are often extremely bad yet go overlooked due to ever-shrinking enforcement of labor laws. Advocates also pointed to the denial of basic federal labor rights such as overtime pay to farmworkers, and to the lack of a path to citizenship no matter how long and how hard they work. Witness Diana Tellefson Torres, CEO of the UFW Foundation, summarizes it this way:
“The H-2A visa program has become the worst source of human trafficking among U.S. visa programs, deprives farm workers of basic freedoms, and subjects US and foreign workers to widespread violations of their rights”
Growers are equally impassioned about what is wrong with the H-2A program. Their chief complaint is the minimum wage they are required to pay to an H-2A worker, known wonkily as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, or AEWR. The Department of Labor announces the AEWR late each year. Growers don’t like how this gives them little time to budget for the next growing season. They also don’t like the methodology used to set the AEWR. What they dislike most is how it goes up so much each year. For witness Chalmers Carr of South Carolina, who runs the second largest peach farm in the country, it went up 14% last year.
“This is a prime example,” Mr. Carr observed, “of how the AEWR is directly driving up food costs.” He spoke for all growers when he added “this is a crisis that will only grow out of control.”
As they must compete with foreign growers in lower-cost countries, US farmers are generally unable to set the prices at which they sell their crops, often giving them no choice but to absorb rising labor costs or go out of business. Growers are also unhappy with some of the restrictions placed on H-2A workers, such as their inability to perform non-agricultural labor during their time here. Nor do they like the bureaucratic requirements of the Department of Labor.
In a nutshell, growers would like to see reasonable limits placed on what they must pay farmworkers, and advocates want to see those farmworkers better protected against abuse. To me, the asymmetry here could spell opportunity. Each side wants something different. Farmworker advocates don’t seem up in arms about keeping the AEWR unchanged—other things are more important—so they might go along with some measures to cap its growth. It goes without saying that growers are not clamoring for the right to abuse their workers, so I expect they would support increased enforcement of existing labor laws, and even new ones to keep farm labor contractors from crossing the line into human trafficking.
And both sides might like some loosening H-2A restrictions, such as by increasing job mobility. Why not let any H-2A farmworker move to a different farm if work dries up at the farm that brought them from Mexico, as they can if they work for the North Carolina Growers Association? And if a grower has a camp full of workers but no farm work, due to weather or what not, why not let those workers do some other kind of work? Naturally there would need to be measures to minimize the abuse of such mobility (starting with overtime pay) but I doubt there’s an H-2A farmworker out there who would not jump at the chance to do some landscaping or painting rather than sit idle and unpaid at a camp.
There are any number of pathways to making things better for America’s growers and farmworkers both, even in divided times like these. I just hope we can pick one. And soon.
Here’s a link to a page where you can read the testimony of each of the five witnesses (listed below) and watch a video replay of the hearing.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/from-farm-to-table-immigrant-workers-get-the-job-done
Chalmers R. Carr, III, Owner & CEO, Titan Farms, Ridge Spring, SC
Leon Sequeira, Prospect, KY
Daniel Costa, Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, Economic Policy Institute, Washington, DC
Adam Lytch, Operations Manager, L&M Farms, East Palatka, FL
Diana Tellefson Torres, Chief Executive Officer, UFW Foundation, Bakersfield, CA
Michael Durbin 