The Labor Department’s proposed changes to the H-2A visa program, which would take effect in January, are supposed to help both growers and workers by making hiring cheaper and speedier. The program is notoriously unwieldy and underused, approving only about 75,000 jobs for foreign workers a year, in a labor force of about 2.5 million seasonal and migrant farm workers, well over half of them undocumented.
To spur use of H-2A visas, the government wants to let employers cut numerous corners. It would adjust the salary formula to push wages down. It would also ease the burden employers face to prove they tried to recruit Americans first, and limit how much employers have to reimburse foreign workers for the cost of going home.
No one expects that the H-2A overhaul will be enough to get most growers to stop hiring illegal immigrants, who work desperately hard for rock-bottom wages. The shortage of farm labor is too great. But by weakening protections for legal workers, the changes would invite abuse and make a flawed program worse.
This new plan harks back to the shameful days of the bracero program of the 1940’s to the 60’s, when Mexicans were recruited into brutal serfdom in the United States. Abuses within today’s H-2A program are rampant; advocacy groups like Farmworker Justice routinely document examples of workers who, chained to their employers and unprotected by the government, submit to abusive conditions, wage theft and other exploitation.
There is a better long-term solution. It’s AgJobs, a federal bill that died with previous efforts at comprehensive immigration reform. It would give undocumented farm workers a chance to legalize and the right to change jobs, a crucial means of discouraging abuse by employers. Its goal is to bolster workers’ rights and build a more productive, stable work force. AgJobs isn’t perfect, but it was born from long negotiations among growers and workers’ advocates — a compromise that the Bush administration’s plans could blow apart.
Congress and the new administration will have to undo this mischief. Anyone who buys the argument that reducing wages and government oversight of a farm worker program will somehow help workers — foreign or American — hasn’t been paying attention.
