HELP WANTED: As border enforcement has tightened, U.S. farms, such as one in Imperial Valley, shown in 2005, are having a more difficult time finding workers, the administration says.
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.

nicole.gaouette@latimes.com




just thought ya all would like something new to chew on...lol

ya know what..............immigration is bull****!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes I understand its cheap labour for the usa, but really, why are we not all working together to make a better life????

It all comes down to greed.......and what the white man won't do for x amount of dollars........

What? You mean to tell me farmers may be forced to pay an American wage? A LIVING WAGE? You must be out of your mind!!! WHAT?! We'd all have to pay an extra 20 cents a pound for our fruits and vegetables?! OH MY GOD!!! IT'LL BE THE END OF THE WORLD!!!

and another thought...what's going to happen when amnesty passes and they all become legalized? Then who will they get to pay less than minimum wage? Then they'll really be up sh*t's creek...lol

I was appalled at the prices of fruit anyways in america..........geeeeeeeez maybe they stay a kraft dinnner nation???? Cause its cheaper eh???

Gypsy

This story is not completely true. Its obviously written by a bleeding heart who is biased and not fully informed about the H-2A agriculture worker program or the illegal immigration problem in this country.

Its a good story written for other uninformed, bleeding hearts!
If these farmers are running a shortfall for workers its their fault. They do not apply a few months in advance, they do so annually, and the program already includes the poultry industry and also the fishing industry.

The problem is that the program requires them to provide humane living conditions and treatment for the workers. They are not allowed to simply treat the workers as slave labor and pay them little or nothing and under the table. Of course the bleeding hearts think this story is aimed at helping legal farm workers, (H-2A workers are not illegal immigrants), when in fact they are helping the farmers practice a form of slavery.

H-2A workers are not illegal, and when Americans talk about the illegal immigration into the US they are not talking about this "LEGAL" group of honest-hard working people. This story is written by an uninformed bleeding heart activist who either knows nothing about the illegal immigration problem here or is purposely trying to draw attention away from the 12-24 million true "ILLEGALS" that are here undocumented.

This program, H-2A, does need to be expanded. The number of workers needs to be increased.

It also needs to provide better enforcement so that these workers are not subjected to slave labor conditions. Right now many farmers go through other channels to aquire workers and avoid the requirements of the H-2A program.

The Apple growers, here provide a free clinic for H-2A workers, but the rules require they be legal, documented, H2A workers.

When growers hire under the table it eliminates their eligibility to get proper medical care. A once very busy and needed facility now goes mostly wasted, but of course the growers get cheaper labor.

They are also require to provide housing. This in most instances, consisted of a couple of 2 bedroom mobile homes that they would crowd with their workers. The trailers were ill kept and during the winter the farmers would open them to the elements to air them out, cleaning them just before the season was to start every year!

Not all growers treated the housing requirements this way, but I guess a few thought it was cheaper for them, and since it was not well enforced they abused it.

If you think these farmers care for their workers, you would be wrong. All they care about is cheaper and cheaper solutions to their labor needs.

As evidenced by the cost of their goods, they do not bring cheaper produce to Americans by giving them cheaper labor. They do not lower their prices they simply increase their profits. I guess this is just good business, but it does nothing to help the H-2A (legal) workers, or alleviate the illegal immigration problems here.

The H-2A program is a good one, but the job categories do not need to be expanded to include jobs Americans are willing to do. (construction, etc.)

one other little quirky note on the story. The president can write all the regulations he wants but until those regulataions are passed by congress and then signed into law by the president they might as well be written on toilet paper because that's all they are good for.

You would think that one who earns a living as a journalist would know that..

Imperial Valley? Do you know where Imperial Valley is? It is close to San Diego in southern California. That place is right on the border, near the region where they are working on border fences. The place most likely relies on labor that crosses the border daily to work and then commute home. Any surprise that their labor would be interrupted wold be out of place. Most likely there is a very high tolerance for Hispanic work forces there though so I don't think there is a lot to worry about for the Mexicans in the area. They just need to work up some housing on the north side of the fence. If you go farther north, up to the major farming areas the demographics are different, and the workers there only have to cross the border illegally once in order to work for months or years at a time.