A country built on guest workers
For more than a century, the United States has relied on temporary foreign workers to plant and harvest its crops.
During World Wars I and II, labor shortages led the United States to open its doors to Mexican agricultural workers. The United States government assured that temporary workers would be treated fairly under the Bracero Program, named after the Spanish word “peasant”. But supervision was minimal, and the program became famous for brutal working and housing conditions, which contributed to its demise in 1964. At that time, Congress had established another avenue for temporary farm workers, which was became the H-2A program in 1986.
For decades, the H-2A program remained relatively small. But in the past 10 years, the demand for temporary farm workers and ranch hands has taken off.
In 2011, Georgia passed a comprehensive anti-immigration law requiring larger companies to use E-Verify to screen new hires and impose heavy fines and prison terms for workers who used false identification to get a job. The law squeezed Georgia farmers, who have long relied on undocumented immigrants and domestic migrant workers to harvest blueberries, onions, peaches, and other hand-picked crops.
Georgia is now a leading destination for H-2A farmworkers, along with Florida, North Carolina, California, Washington, and Louisiana. Despite the president’s executive order to “hire Americans,” even Trump’s Virginia vineyard was certified to hire 23 H-2A workers last year. Industry lobbyists are lobbying Congress and the Trump government to extend the program to new types of farmworkers and make it cheaper and easier to use.
The growth of the program has spawned a craft industry of visa agents and producer associations to help farmers navigate the complex application process. But increasingly, farmers are turning to farm labor contractors like Sánchez to supply workers. Last year, the Department of Labor certified 1,900 applications for H-2A contractor workers, more than triple that in 2014, granting these contractors permission to bring more than 100,000 temporary farm workers to the U.S., according to analysis by federal data from NBC News. Many contractors are former farm workers.
“In theory, getting labor contractors to organize workers is really a good thing, because the contractor specializes in finding work for the crew and allows workers to have more hours,” said Philip Martin, labor economist at the University of California, Davis. But many of them compete by providing workers at very low prices, Martin said, creating an incentive to skimp on workers’ pay and housing checks, given the lack of vigorous oversight. “The Labor Department has not been good at kicking out the bad guys,” he said.
In late 2017, Sánchez asked the Labor Department to bring 30 H-2A workers to Georgia to harvest pine straw, testifying that he had tried to recruit American workers, as required by the program, but that none had applied for the jobs. She promised that foreign workers would be paid $ 10.62 per hour, the minimum for H-2A workers in Georgia that year, according to a federal formula, or $ 1 per bale of straw, reaching the same hourly minimum wage; They would be housed in a motel that had already passed government inspection, according to records obtained by NBC News.
Instead, the workers said, they stayed for a week in a motel, sharing beds, and some forced to sleep on the floor, before Sánchez moved them to the decrepit Blackshear home.
No one is likely to check Sanchez: Under federal law, the home must pass inspection only when an employer requests to bring H-2A workers to the US after the workers arrive, sometimes months later, no follow-ups are required.
By visiting more than a dozen H-2A sites in Georgia and North Carolina in November, NBC News found government-approved farm worker homes filled with insects and spider nests, as well as cardboard covering the broken windows. A run down trailer in Georgia had holes in the walls; Feral cats had crawled into the kitchen cabinet, an H-2A worker documented in a video sent to Georgia Legal Services, an advocacy group representing farmworkers. “Rats are better than us,” said the worker in the video.
The Department of Labor conducts unscheduled inspections of H-2A job sites across the country, including occasional home investigations; The agency’s Wage and Hour division can issue monetary fines, compel employers to pay back wages, exclude employers from the program, and refer cases for prosecution. But resources for the app have not kept pace with the rapid expansion of the program: Wages and Hours staff has dropped 19 percent since 2016, according to federal records. And even when employers are prohibited from hiring more H-2A workers, which is relatively rare, the bans are usually only temporary, one to three years.
State oversight is also limited. Using federal grants, state agencies help H-2A employers meet program requirements and carry out required home inspections before workers move out. Despite the rapid growth of the H-2A program, federal funding for these state agencies has not increased, with some getting less last year than three years earlier, according to records released as part of a 2019 lawsuit against the Department of Labor. . Georgia’s federal funds fell 15 percent, the state Department of Labor confirmed.
Some states, such as North Carolina and California, also have their own standards and inspection systems for farmworker homes, and take action against H-2A employers who break the rules. But others, including Georgia, have few additional rules and limited enforcement authority.
Last year, the Trump administration recognized some of the “unsafe and unhealthy” conditions facing H-2A workers. In July 2019, the administration launched a lengthy proposal that sought to improve housing standards and increase bonuses that contractors must obtain as proof that they can pay their workers.
But the administration’s plan, which the Labor Department will finalize next month, would also loosen the rules for employers who have complained that the H-2A program is too slow, expensive and cumbersome. State agencies would be allowed to conduct less frequent home inspections by having employers certify. Workers, meanwhile, would be responsible for more of their inbound travel expenses; Some would be paid less under a new federal formula to calculate H-2A minimum wages, while others would be paid more.
Some lawmakers are trying to push the program in a new direction. Last year, the Democrat-controlled House passed a bipartisan farm job bill that would include a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants and H-2A workers. The bill would also add 20,000 H-2A visas year-round, which are currently unlimited but only seasonal.
But the chances of Congress approving any type of immigration reform are slim, with a pandemic affecting the country and a presidential election just a few months away.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has continued to keep the door open for H-2A workers, temporarily easing visa rules by allowing employers to hire guest workers more quickly and keep them in the U.S. for longer. “The Trump administration is working to keep our farmers and producers competitive, while ensuring that American workers have access to more opportunities and higher wages,” the White House said in a statement, adding that health problems, Worker safety and security H-2A employment “can be identified and resolved.”
Despite unemployment rising to the highest rate since the Great Depression, industry leaders say farmers are still struggling to find enough workers to plant and harvest their crops, hard manual labor generally found in places remote.
Labor advocates fear that the faltering economy in the United States could put these guest workers at even greater risk. While demand for products sold in grocery stores has remained high, the pandemic has dealt a severe blow to many farms that supply restaurants, cafes, and other institutions.
That has increased pressure for producers who rely on the H-2A program to cut costs, and that could ultimately mean skimping on wages, housing and other labor expenses, said Michael Hancock, an attorney for Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a defender of civil rights. and employment law firm. Hancock was an official in the Labor Department in the administration of President Barack Obama.
“Who are the most powerless people in this process, in the weakest negotiating and negotiating position?” Hancock said. “Workers.”
