Latest news with #H2Avisa
Wall Street Journal
02-07-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Trump Does an Immigration Solid for Farmers
Pssst, don't tell anti-immigration impresario Stephen Miller. But on Wednesday the Trump Labor Department moved to rescind a burdensome Biden regulation on farm guest workers. Excellent news. Even as it waved illegal migrants across the border, the Biden Administration sought to deter farmers from using the H-2A visa program to hire guest workers. Unions say foreign workers suppress wages, no matter that the H-2A program requires employers to pay elevated 'prevailing' wages to guest workers.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump administration to streamline migrant work visa program for U.S. farmers
SANTA FE, N.M. — U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins previewed a Trump administration policy shift on Monday that would expand access to immigrant work visas used by American farmers. The upcoming announcement will include reforms to make it easier to apply for the H-2A visa program in line with President Donald Trump's dual objectives of enforcing immigration laws and supporting the food supply chain, according to Rollins. 'The president has remained very focused on the goal of a 100% legal workforce in our country, but, at the same time, ensure we have a safe and secure food supply,' Rollins said in response to a question from the Deseret News. Media reports identified Rollins as one of the key influences behind the Trump administration's decision earlier this month to redirect Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts away from the agriculture sector. The Department of Agriculture has estimated that from 2020 to 2022 around 42% of crop farmworkers 'held no work authorization' to be in the U.S. Recent workplace raids of fields in California led growers to report that 30-60% of workers had stopped showing up for fear of deportation, the New York Times reported. Rollins reportedly called the President Donald Trump and relayed concerns that this disruption would impact the country's food supply. On June 12, ICE agents were told to pause 'all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.' But deportations aren't the only concern for Utah farmers, according to Terry Camp, the vice president of public policy at the Utah Farm Bureau. 'We have had producers here in Utah struggling to get H-2A applications approved that have not had similar issues in the past,' Camp said. Many farmers rely partially or entirely on seasonal migrant labor to harvest their fields because it is difficult to find employees who are citizens, the Deseret News has reported. Now that border crossings have come to a halt, Camp said Rollins could use her influence to emphasize helping farmers get the laborers they need. Speaking at the annual conference of the Western Governors Association, Rollins said that she and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who will also be speaking at the event, were 'on calls all weekend' working on modifications to visa programs that will be announced 'in a day or two.' 'There is a lot we can do to make the process easier, more efficient, to ensure that, especially for our smaller to mid-size farms that don't have the armies of lawyers,' Rollins said. Rollins was on a phone call Monday morning 'with the White House' talking about how to expand the legal workforce, she said, because doing so will help Trump's priority of supporting American farmers. The Trump administration will 'streamline the current process, obviously within current law,' so that farmers can secure the labor force they need 'efficiently, effectively and not cost prohibitively.'
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump administration suspends enforcement of Biden-era farmworker rule
By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump's administration said on Friday it was suspending enforcement of a "burdensome" farmworker rule from former President Joe Biden's administration. The 2024 rule provided protection for workplace organizing to foreign farmworkers in the U.S. on H-2A visas. The U.S. Department of Labor said the rule had already been suspended because of federal injunctions. "The decision provides much-needed clarity for American farmers navigating the H-2A program, while also aligning with President Trump's ongoing commitment to strictly enforcing U.S. immigration laws," the department said in a statement. "As multiple federal court injunctions have created significant legal uncertainty, inconsistency, and operational challenges for farmers lawfully employing H-2A workers, this field assistance bulletin clarifies that the department will not be enforcing the 2024 final rule effective immediately." The H-2A visa program allows farmers to bring in an unlimited number of foreign seasonal farmhands if they can show there are not enough U.S. workers willing, qualified and available to do the job. The program has grown over time, with 378,000 H-2A positions certified by the Labor Department in 2023, three times more than in 2014. That figure is about 20% of the nation's farmworkers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Trump said last week he would take steps soon to address the effects of his immigration crackdown on the country's farm and hotel industries, which rely heavily on migrant labor.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Trump has no plan for who will grow US food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work'
Last spring, Carmelo Mendez was pruning peach trees in Colorado on a temporary visa, missing his children and wife back home, but excited about how his $17.70 hourly wage would improve their lives. This spring, he's back in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala frantically searching Facebook for a job on one of the thousands of farms across the US that primarily employ guest workers like him. Mendez is one of the more than 300,000 foreign agricultural workers who comes to the US every year on an H-2A visa, which allows him to temporarily work plowing fields, pruning trees and harvesting crops in states from Washington to Georgia, Florida to New York, Texas to California. But as federal immigration policies change rapidly, farmers and workers alike are uncertain about their future. 'Without [this guest worker program], I believe agriculture in the US would decline a lot because people there don't want to do the work,' Mendez said. As the fate of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers remains in limbo amid Donald Trump's mass deportation threats, and the administration's H-2A policies are undecided, the future of these guest workers remains unclear. Their numbers grow each year – and they are increasingly central to an industry historically dominated by undocumented workers. The industry isn't creating new jobs either. Farmers agree with farm workers like Mendez. They say they cannot attract other workers to their rural fields. The debate over guest workers is dividing Republican support. Jonathan Berry, who was nominated to be the solicitor at the Department of Labor, wrote the labor chapter for Project 2025, the rightwing proposal to overhaul the government from the Heritage Foundation thinktank. That section advocates for replacing H-2A workers with local workers and automation. While technology could replace some specific farm tasks, many crops still depend primarily on human labor, and small farmers say they can't afford to invest in equipment that could take more than a decade to pay off. Other co-authors of the chapter, such as economist Oren Cass, do not think the jobs should be eliminated, but that farmers should improve working conditions to attract citizens to them instead. On the other hand, Trump's power depends on a coalition that includes agricultural communities, who voted for him at almost 80% in 2024, according to Investigate Midwest, a journalism non-profit. Agribusiness also donated more than $24m to his re-election. Farm groups insist US citizens are unwilling to do the arduous labor and that eliminating H-2A workers could collapse the food system. They generally advocate for loosening regulations for H-2A workers, like reducing wage and housing requirements. Trump heeded their calls before. In 2019, his Department of Labor unsuccessfully proposed removing some regulations on the H-2A. As seasonal harvests begin, farmers nationwide are bringing over workers. At Crist Bros Orchards in Walden, New York, H-2A workers diligently prune back apple tree branches covered with white flowers freshly burst from pink buds so that each future apple will get the same access to the sun. At the packing house, some load last season's apples out of refrigerators on to conveyor belts while others check for irregularities before packaging. The orchard has been in the Crist family since 1883, and Jenny Crist now runs it alongside her brother and parents. She said their first wave of workers came this past March and are preparing the orchards for harvest, when more workers come to pluck apples off the trees. By the end of the year, more than 150 H-2A workers will have passed through the compound to help produce the apples sold at supermarkets down the east coast. '[H-2A is] providing labor that allows us to have a farm 70 miles north of New York City, and provide food in the United States, and employ people year-round,' Crist said. 'Without it, we would certainly not be farming apples. My guess is that this would probably be houses.' The H-2A visa was created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a huge measure that simultaneously cracked down on employers hiring immigrants without work authorization and provided 'amnesty' to close to 3 million immigrants without legal status. The law says that farmers must demonstrate an attempt to hire locally first and pay H-2A workers above the minimum wage. Unlike local workers, H-2A workers must also be provided transportation to and from their homes, housing for the season and daily transportation. Labor leaders argue farmers prefer H-2A workers, despite their costs, because they are easily exploitable. Since the visa is connected to their employment, workers cannot find a job elsewhere, making their ability to be in the country completely dependent on an employer who can revoke it at any moment, and sometimes holds on to their passports, against DOL requirements. This reluctance to leave an abusive worksite can be compounded by the fact that many H-2A workers arrive with debt they have accrued from paying recruiters to get here. Employers are required to pay all recruitment costs, but recruiters' practices go largely unregulated since they operate internationally. The situation of agriculture workers in the US is really bad already, but what they're going to do is legalize this oppression. The DC-based Economic Policy Institute, a liberal thinktank, has said this amounts to a program that exploits and silences migrant workers, replacing year-round workers in the process. In some cases, US prosecutors have accused farmers and recruiters of using the H-2A program to engage in forced labor trafficking. 'The situation of agriculture workers in the US is really bad already, but what they're going to do is legalize this oppression,' said Carlos Marentes, executive director of the El Paso-based Centro de Los Trabajadores Agrícolas Fronterizos. 'In the H-2A program, the way they're proposing to get rid of the regulations and any guarantees that workers get is going to look like legalized slavery. The industry understands that they need a labor force, but they [want] a labor force that is going to be afraid, that is going to be grateful because the employer is providing you a job.' If mass deportations go forward as promised, growers and ranchers will be even more desperate for these workers. Undocumented workers compose about 40% of the agricultural workforce, according to the US Department of Agriculture. These longtime farm workers say that the system is designed to replace them with this more vulnerable group, limiting their work opportunities and decreasing their union's power by giving farmers an alternative labor pool. 'It's very clear to us that the deportation of undocumented workers is to clear the field for bringing in H-2A workers instead of having these farm worker families that are part of our community now for over 20 years and providing them [legal] status to continue being productive community members,' said Rosalinda Guillen, a farm union leader in Washington state who grew up in the fields and founded Community to Community, a local non-profit. 'Everybody in this country is an immigrant and has had the opportunity to build community and root themselves and all of a sudden the families that came here from Mexico don't?' In 2023, a bipartisan coalition in the House of Representatives introduced the Dignity Act, which aimed to address this by extending legal status to long-term farm workers while at the same time expanding the H-2A visa. The proposal eventually failed, though, after Republicans reversed course on it. In Minnesota's Red River valley, Scott Field runs Field Brothers Farm with his brother John, growing grains, beans and sugar beets on the same land his family has worked for five generations. His local community has shrunk as younger generations moved to cities, leaving the Field brothers dependent on H-2A workers. 'There is just flat out nobody out here available to work,' Scott Field said. With housing and transportation factored in, Field says they spend more than $30 an hour on H-2A workers. It would be easier if they could just employ them as US citizens, he said as he detailed why. 'These are people who are working, making money, spending money in our communities, and paying taxes. Talk about a revitalization of Rural America if they made it easier for them to come here and stay with their families,' Field said. Changes to the H-2A visa would also probably be felt in Mexico, where over 91% of the H-2A workers come from. Some have small subsistence farms, or are part of the 2 million people who became landless with the 1994 onset of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and depend on their seasonal incomes to provide their families with basic necessities. Flavio Vázquez has worked at Crist Bros Orchards for the last five years, earning more than double in an hour packing apples than what he could in a day in his home in the Mexican state of Morelos. According to 2020 estimates, more than half of Morelos's population lives in poverty despite unemployment being below 2%. The fact that the visa allows him to escape poverty doesn't mean that it is ideal for him, though. Vázquez must spend eight months a year living between a warehouse and a dorm 2,500 miles away from his loved ones, relieved to be earning a higher income, but at a cost. While he enjoys his job in New York's Hudson valley, he wishes he could bring his family and build a permanent life. 'In Morelos, the situation is difficult, so I come here to stabilize the community there economically and to have resources for my family,' Vázquez said, looking resigned as apple-scanning machinery roared in the background. 'In Mexico, you leave your children, your wife, your parents, who support you emotionally. I would feel a lot more comfortable with my family here.' This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative in partnership with Palabra and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University at the City of New York (Cuny). Puente News Collaborative is a bilingual non-profit newsroom, convener and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the US-Mexico border.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Our View: Reforming US immigration system is long overdue
It's a long shot. But it's a shot worth taking. House Republicans, including Kern's Republican Rep. David Valadao, and Democrats have introduced the Farm Workforce Modernization Act for the fourth time in as many Congresses. Earlier bills passed the House on a bipartisan vote only to be defeated in the Senate. With the goal of stabilizing the agricultural workforce by reforming the H2A agricultural worker visa program, the FWMA also would provide a path to legalization for undocumented workers currently living in the United States. It would allow farmworkers to seek 'certified agricultural status' — a temporary status for those who have worked at least 180 days in agriculture over the last two years. That would allow workers to apply for a green card contingent on additional years of work in agriculture. People with 10 years of agricultural work prior to the date of enactment would be required to complete four additional years of such work. Workers with less than 10 years would have to complete eight additional years. After completion of those requirements and with a green card in hand, workers could apply for the naturalization process. Acknowledging the bill has a long-shot chance at passing, Valadao told The Californian, 'I just want something that works for agriculture and that works for the people who work in agriculture.' Repeatedly, immigration reform has been derailed by raw politics. One party wants reforms, while the other wants to use the nation's failed immigration system as a hammer. Last year, the U.S. came close to reforming immigration policy with a bipartisan bill negotiated by conservative Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Independent Sen. Krysten Sinema of Arizona. Before the bill's release, it faced strong opposition from then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who had made immigration a top campaign issue. Republican support quickly disappeared. Only four Republican senators, including Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who had delegated Lankford to negotiate the bill, voted for it. A group of about 100 Oklahoma GOP leaders condemned Lankford for his efforts and a popular conservative political commentator threatened to destroy him if immigration reformed passed during the presidential election. Although the bill contained many provisions desired by Republicans — such as building more border wall, hiring more Border Patrol agents, expanding detention capacity and speeding deportation — it was 'dead on arrival' in the Republican-controlled Senate. Conceding the political climate remains 'complicated,' Valadao said about this year's bill, 'One of the things I've heard for a long time is when the border is secure, we can then have the conversation about resolving programs like the guest worker program. So, I do believe there's an opportunity.' Legalization and an option for citizenship has earned the FWMA the endorsement of the United Farmworkers union, which in the past has opposed expansion of the H2A program. 'Across the country, immigrant farmworkers are going to work every day to feed America,' UFW President Teresa Romero said in a news release. 'Yet these same workers are all too often afraid of getting deported simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.' A UFW spokesman noted that it is the height of hypocrisy that during the COVID-19 pandemic, farmworkers were designated 'essential,' while they were denied the ability to just exist legally in our society. 'We have failed as a federal government, Congress and the White House. For decades, we haven't been able to have a system that worked,' said Valadao. 'We've created a system that has helped people, or encouraged people to essentially break our laws and live here for 20 years in the shadows. And now we're just supposed to tell them never, ever can they come back?' Adoption of a reasonable and fair immigration policy is long overdue. The first step begins with setting aside xenophobic political posturing and passing the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.
