Thread: State guest worker numbers up 500%

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Unprecedented enforcement of the nation's immigration laws is pushing Florida growers to use guest workers at a pace not seen for 40 years.

After watching $500,000 in tomatoes rot in his fields last year, Palmetto tomato grower Bob Spencer dipped into the guest worker visa program for the first time.

Spencer says no tomato grower has used the program since the early 1960s.

His West Coast Tomato employs 400 farmworkers year-round and about 1,000 seasonal workers. This year, the Palmetto company has 35 guest workers.

On average, Spencer's operation ran 40-50 workers short in 2005.

"After the shortages we experienced last year, we realized we couldn't just sit around and hope for the best," Spencer said. "We invest heavily in the ground, and we need to have workers to harvest those crops."

Florida growers and farmworker advocates say that the number of guest workers being employed picking Sunshine State crops is up 500 percent.

Last year, there were about 1,000 guest workers legally in the United States under the federal program -- referred to as H2A -- with about 16 employers applying for workers.

In 2006, that ballooned to about 5,000 with more than 70 employers applying, says Greg Schell, a Lake Worth labor attorney and farm worker advocate.

The unresolved immigration debate is likely to force even more employers to tap the H2A program, under which a guest worker visa is good for 364 days.

President Bush has been pushing for an extensive revamping of immigration law. He wants a guest worker program and the possibility of eventual citizenship for many illegal immigrants already in the country.

In the past, H2A has not been broadly used by Florida growers because of its costly and complicated nature.

Exactly who is going to be paying the additional costs of the program for farmers in unclear, but, all things being equal, growers are likely to pass the cost along to consumers.

Spencer said that labor was the primary obstacle to getting his crops to grocery store aisles during the past year. The shortage was unprecedented for an industry that relies so heavily on Latino immigrant workers.

In the last year, the Department of Homeland Security has dramatically stepped up workplace enforcement, arresting and deporting hundreds of illegal immigrants and fining those responsible for employing them.

Just Tuesday, federal agents raided meat processing plants in six states and arrested suspected illegal immigrants in an identity theft investigation.

Agents said the workers were being arrested on administrative immigration violations and, in some cases, criminal arrest warrants stemming from a nearly yearlong investigation.

The Social Security Administration has adopted a new regulation that allows the agency to freely share non-matching Social Security numbers with the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.

There also been increased border enforcement.

All that combined to create a "fear factor" among growers and other employers with large numbers of undocumented workers, Schell said.

"More and more employers are going to be scrambling, trying to find some alternative way to get alien labor," he said.

Schell receives copies of all H2A requests.

"Employers are really worried about these no-match letters," Schell said. "We've got huge numbers of applications for H2A workers and H2B workers. We're still trying to get our arms around the whole thing -- not knowing who they are or who they are working for, but just that they are here."

The H2A temporary agricultural program gives agriculture employers anticipating labor shortages an opportunity to bring foreign workers to the United States on a seasonal basis.

There has also been a drastic increase in the number of H2B workers. It is a sister program open to industries other than agriculture that tops out at a set number of issued work visas. The measure has been used in the past in landscaping, manufacturing and construction.

Government enforcement has created other complications.

"With stricter enforcement, existing workers are not easily able to move around," Spencer said. "These two things together have had a bearing on the availability of agriculture workers."

Florida farmers are lobbying to change regulations for H2A program to make it more user-friendly.

To qualify, employers must now petition for guest workers, demonstrate the shortage of domestic workers, pay for round-trip transportation, house them free of charge and pay them an elevated rate.

If a grower employs both domestic and guest workers, all must be paid that same rate: $8.56 per hour.

"Last year, there was a lot of citrus left on the trees and a lot of fruits and vegetables left in the field. There just wasn't enough workers to harvest all the crops," said Walter Kates, labor relations director for the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association. "If labor continues to decrease, as it has done in the last few years, there will be an increase in the use of the program."

Harvesting typically completed by the end of May last year was still going on at the end of July, said Mike Sparks of the Florida Citrus Mutual.

While Florida growers escaped the catastrophic losses that were seen in the California pear industry this year, they still took a significant hit.

Many growers had to pay a premium to get their crops out of the ground or off the tree.

This season, Sparks said, growers are feeling more optimistic.

"After the shortages we experienced last year, we realized we couldn't just sit around and hope for the best," Spencer said. "We invest heavily in the ground, and we need to have workers to harvest those crops."

Florida growers and farmworker advocates say that the number of guest workers being employed picking Sunshine State crops is up 500 percent.

That's because the "guest" workers move on to steal a better paying job from a legal US citizen. They just up and run to wherever they want to in the US and could not care less when their "guestworker" status has expired. They just get themselves a few fake documents, buy, steal, or make up a SS#, and continue to live here in the US, UNCHECKED by immigration officals . Nope, they don't want to come here to pick tomatoes and then go home, they want to come here and have a few anchor babies and collect every dime in aid that they can from the US government(OUR tax dollars)!!!! I am so fed up with illegals stealing from us that I could just scream! What's it gonna take for the idiots in Washington to wake up? Can someone tell me?