Thread: U.S. lets in more immigrants for farms

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... ome-center

U.S. lets in more immigrants for farms

The administration is quietly relaxing visa regulations because farmworkers are in critically short supply.
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 7, 2007

WASHINGTON -- With a nationwide farmworker shortage threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Bush administration has begun quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers can legally be brought into the country.

The effort, urgently underway at the departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to rescue farm owners caught in a vise between a complex process to hire legal guest workers and stepped-up enforcement that has reduced the number of illegal planters, pickers and middle managers crossing the border.

"It is important for the farm sector to have access to labor to stay competitive," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "As the southern border has tightened, some producers have a more difficult time finding a workforce, and that is a factor of what is going on today."

The push to speedily rewrite the regulations is also the Bush administration's attempt to step into a breach left when Congress did not pass an immigration overhaul in June that might have helped American farms. Almost three-quarters of farmworkers are thought to be illegal immigrants.

On all sides of the farm industry, the administration's behind-the-scenes initiative to revamp H-2A farmworker visas is fraught with anxiety. Advocates for immigrants fear the changes will come at the expense of worker protections because the administration has received and is reportedly acting on extensive input from farm lobbyists. And farmers in areas such as the San Joaquin Valley, which is experiencing a 20% labor shortfall, worry the administration's changes will not happen soon enough for the 2008 growing season.

"It's like a ticking time bomb that's going to go off," said Luawanna Hallstrom, chief operating officer of Harry Singh & Sons, a third-generation family farm in Oceanside that grows tomatoes. "I'm looking at my fellow farmers and saying, 'Oh my God, what's going on?' "

Officials at the three federal agencies are scrutinizing the regulations to see whether they can adjust the farmworker program, an unwieldy system used by less than 2% of American farms to bring in foreign workers. They are considering a series of changes, including lengthening the time workers can stay, expanding the types of work they can do, simplifying how their applications are processed, and redefining terms such as "temporary."

Administration sources said they were moving aggressively. They declined to discuss details of the proposals.

The agencies are also working on possible changes to a separate visa program, H-2B, which brings in seasonal workers for resorts, clam-shucking operations and horse stables, among other businesses.

The administration has pursued the project discreetly. The issue of immigration has generated friction between President Bush and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has strongly opposed many of the initiatives that Bush has pursued.

The changes to the H-2A visa program comprise one of more than two dozen initiatives the administration announced in August. Most of the initiatives dealt with increased enforcement, the most prominent being a measure that would force employers to either fire workers for whom they've received "no match" notification (indicating their W-2 data don't match Social Security Administration records) or face punitive action from the Department of Homeland Security. When Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the enforcement push, he also acknowledged the problems that agriculture reported.

"Even putting aside no-match letters, just our increased work at the border was actually causing a drop in the number of workers coming across," Chertoff said.

David James, an assistant secretary of Labor, said Bush asked his department, which has jurisdiction over most H-2A rules, to review the entire program. The agency "is now in the process of identifying ways the program can be improved to provide farmers with an orderly and timely flow of legal workers while protecting the rights of both U.S. workers and foreign temporary workers," James said.

The current program, managed by all three agencies, is famously dysfunctional.

Farmers have to apply for workers about a month in advance, but the agencies often fail to coordinate their response in time for the harvest, which farmers can't always predict. At Hallstrom's farm, where tidy rows of tomato plants run almost to the ocean's edge, half of the 1,000 workers are in the H-2A program. (Nationally, about 60,000 H-2A applications a year are usually filed, compared with more than 3 million farm jobs to be filled. There is no cap on the number of H-2A workers allowed into the U.S.)

She remembers submitting an emergency request for H-2A workers one year and getting the visas 60 days later. She said the laborers spent two weeks pulling rotten fruit off the vines, and the farm lost $2.5 million. "Devastating," Hallstrom said.

Growers also complain about paying for workers' housing, transportation, visas and other fees. Harry Yates, a North Carolina Christmas-tree grower, estimates that his labor costs for H-2A workers are $14 an hour, compared with a competitor whose illegal laborers cost about $7.50 an hour. Like other farmers, Yates said using the H-2A program was an invitation to lawsuits from worker advocates and frequent government investigations.

"I understand why so many growers are afraid to use this program. It is too expensive, too complicated, too slow and too likely to land you in court," Yates said.

Some advocates for workers fiercely dispute this. They say farmers just want to keep wages low.

"The employers want to be free of government oversight, legal-services representation for the guest workers, and other efforts to enforce the modest H-2A worker protections," said Bruce Goldstein, executive director of the advocacy group Farmworker Justice, which is affiliated with the nonprofit National Council of La Raza.

Industry lobbyists have sent the Bush administration a set of detailed suggestions for overhauling the H-2A program through administrative changes, which could take weeks to put in place, and through changes in the regulations, a process that takes months.

Some of the suggestions under consideration include changing the procedures farmers must use to try to hire U.S. citizens first. Currently farmers have to advertise the jobs, then submit applications to Labor and Homeland Security to bring in foreign workers. Growers would prefer to move to a system in which they pledged that they had done all they could to recruit U.S. workers, but no longer had to submit an application to Labor.

Other changes under consideration would simplify the detailed H-2A housing requirements, extend the definition of "temporary" beyond 10 months, and expand the definition of "agricultural" workers to include such industries as meatpacking and poultry processing.

The only problems with these programs is that the workers never leave and they turn to other ways to make money such as crime, gangs, and drugs. Why are farmers allowed to use cheap labor at the expense of our communities? Instead of coming up with programs for hiring Americans, they want the easy way out and hire the trash of mexico which includes illegals. When was the last time you heard of a raid on a farm?

This is another reason why we don't need the massive AgJOBS amnesty!! They're already getting their cheap labor supply replenished.

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Call the Senate: No AgJOBS Amnesty !

Administration sources said they were moving aggressively. They declined to discuss details of the proposals.

The Dept. of Labor seems to be supplying these workers in spite of our laws. We really need to get some answers.

The lead story on ABC"s Nightly News tonight was the food crisis this country faces because crops are rotting in the fields due to the crack down on Illegal Aliens.

They talked about the Prez. working to make changes in the H-2A visas so farmers would not loose their crops !

What a bunch of hooey.ABC never mentioned the H-2A has been available but farmers want slave labor and refuse to use the program and so the prez will probably change it so they will have their slave labor workforce !!

"I understand why so many growers are afraid to use this program. It is too expensive, too complicated, too slow and too likely to land you in court," Yates said.

....AND THEY WOULD HAVE TO PAY MINIMUM WAGE, AND THEY WOULD HAVE TO FOLLOW THE LABOR LAWS.


THIS IS ALL BS. ALL EXCUSES.

THEY DONT WANT TO HIRE LEGAL WORKERS. AND THEY ARE ADMITTING THAT THEY HIRE ILLEGAL WORKERS. THEY SHOULD ALL BE JAILED AND FINED LIKE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FOR EACH ILLEGAL WORKER.

LET THE CROPS ROT. LET IT. ANYONE WITH A YARD OR A ROOFTOP OR EVEN A FIRE ESCAPE CAN GROW THEIR OWN VEGGIES AND FRUITS. LET IT ROT. WE WONT STARVE.

WHEN SETTLERS FIRST CAME TO THIS COUNTRY THEY ALL GREW THEIR OWN FOOD....EVEN MADE A LIVING GROWING FOOD. SO THEY CAN GROW ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN THEIR FAMILIES AND IT WONT BE INFECTED. WE SHOULD BE DOING THAT ANYWAY BECAUSE OUR FOOD SUPPLY IS NO LONGER SAFE. LET THE FIELDS ROT.

The employers want to be free of government oversight, legal-services representation for the guest workers, and other efforts to enforce the modest H-2A worker protections," said Bruce Goldstein, executive director of the advocacy group Farmworker Justice, which is affiliated with the nonprofit National Council of La Raza.

Well here we go again, I'm telling you they are looking at anyway they can to get more cheap labor into this country.

"Employers want to be free of government oversight" Well wouldn't all business owners love to be. Affiliated with La Raza, need more be said.

This is plain BS.

Absolutely no common sense at all by our government! That is how we originally got into this mess. Farmers wanted cheap labor and workers; these illegal immigrants hiring has only happened with in the last twenty years or there about.

What did this farmers do before they had their illegal immigrants? They hired poor Americans or those wanting extra money. I'll say they whine too much. Pay better if your having problems but don't drag down the entire county so you can stay rich. Those struggling sell off your millions of dollar worth of real estate.

Living in a farming community I'll tell you now; they were shorthanded because of the crackdown; but they have mostly been filled with legal Americans working now. Lets not forget there is a lot of money at play here pushing this illegal immigrant insanity. In my state driver licenses now. Look the weather has been overly dry this summer and the fruits rotted because lack of rain before even picking season. That's called mother nature. Now they can spin that all they want and say it was a labor shortage. Don't see it here right now; yes there are a few illegals immigrants working about but many are Americans who happen to be black. They picked up the slack. I noticed illegal immigrant children getting onto school buses; though not many they are doing this. At whose expense?

Right now if a crop rots the farmers don't hurt; they are paid off or are subsidized by the US taxpayer.

The crazy part of this is expecting them to stay on the farm! As we have already seen they have taken many jobs Americans already do. The meat plants having trouble? Was filled with Americans. This is nothing more than a huge lobbyist group known as farmers protecting their own welfare at the cost of the nations!