Missing the Harvest - No Action on the AgJobs Bill
We take for granted that we can go to the grocery store and choose what we wish from aisles of fresh fruit and vegetables. We expect the quality to be high and the price to be fair. That wealth of food is available to us as a result of our successful agricultural system. Whether we like it or not, undocumented workers are vital in the production of our food.
The failure of immigration reform last summer left our farm communities in a tough spot. The American Farm Bureau estimates that around 500,000 US farm workers do not have documentation.
As border control and immigration agents enforce the letter of law, however, these workers are leaving in fear, leaving the harvest work undone and crops rotting in the fields. The Farm Bureau has warned Congress that "without a stable, legal supply of labor to replace currently unauthorized workers, the fresh fruit and vegetable sector could see US production deline by up to $9 billion a year." In the wake of the Immigration Reform failure, there is another solution: The AgJobs bill (S. 340) introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D -CA). The AgJobs bill authorizes a pilot program to legalize the immigration status for farm workers who have worked in the US for two or more years. The bill also changes the H-2A program to be a more effective guest worker program.
A Washington Post editorial "Rot in the Fields" summarizes the situation:
"As Congress dithers, fair and balanced legislation to deal with the problem languishes. The so-called AgJobs bill would allow some 800,000 undocumented workers -- qualified farmhands who have been working here for several seasons -- to register, pay fines and legalize their immigration status by working in agriculture three to five more years before they could qualify for green cards. At the same time, it would provide a more sensible way to ensure an adequate supply of farm labor by streamlining the current H-2A visa program for agricultural guest workers, which is so cumbersome and unreliable that farmers use it for only an estimated 2 percent of all farmworkers."
Sadly, the AgJobs bill has been left unconsidered by the Senate--like our crops left unharvested in the fields.
(Photo: Sandy Huffaker / Getty Images)
Comments
Calling an illegal immigrant “undocumented” is like calling a drug dealer an unlicensed pharmacist. Most illegals are not here as ag workers;n only about 2% of the 20 million are employed by that industry.
Just why do you really want to have this country overpopulated by those who have no regard for our laws, customs , language, borders? Why do you want to displace the lower wage earners with those who do nor share our morals, expectations, requirement for education, and birth control. They are vagrance who use our tax funded health system, educationl system and social programs which are a drain on my pocket book. We need to make employers responsible. We must hold them accountable for insuring the status of those they hire. This will do much to encourage most to repatriate to their countries of origin. The rest must be found, adjudicated, punished and deported with no reentry allowed
The agjobs bill has been pushed for years now. The nation has done ok without for long enough to prove we can do without it forever.
Employers have a long history of crying wolf about their cheap foreign labor. Consider the following piece of gloom and doom that sounds contemporary but was from the 1882 debate about limiting farmers from bringing in Chinese labor:
“The crop of the present year, although deemed a short one, taxed the labor capacity of the state to the utmost. . . . If such was the situation this year, what will it be when the numerous young orchards now just coming into bearing will be producing full crops? The labor is not now in the country to handle such an increase in production.”
Farmers lost that debate but got along fine without their cheap foreign labor.
In 1960 Edward R. Murrow produced a program called Harvest of Shame about the exploitation of farm workers that caused the Bracero guest-worker program to get the ax.
The head of the California Agriculture Department told Congress to expect a 50% drop in tomato production if the program was canceled.
Congress did cancel the program. That drop didn’t happen, instead tomato farmers were forced to mechanize. Output rose and prices fell.
Time Magazine chimed in with “Who Will Pick the Strawberries?” that made the identical arguments for guest workers that are being advanced today. ( June 1965 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898314,00.html?internalid=related)
The federal government offers the H-2A visa which ALREADY allows farmers to import unlimited numbers of foreign ag workers for specific short-term work. If some growers lack workers, it is only because they failed to be creative enough to attract a domestic workforce or failed to use the legal foreign guestworker program that is available to them.
Growers who refuse to use the H-2A program mainly do so because they have to pay an almost decent wage under the program, while illegal aliens are cheaper.
If growers find the H-2A program too cumbersome, they should direct their lobbyists to support H-2A reforms instead of amnesty.
Americans will do this work - at a decent wage. The Department of Labor finds that the majority of farm workers (about 55%) in the U.S. are native-born Americans!
Thanks for your comments. The TIME article was a great example of how longstanding this problem is. Compared to the $1.75 of the sixties, today the Farm Bureau reports wages of over $11 an hour for paid farm labor, well above minimum wage. Still we can’t seem to shake our reliance on migrants (legal and illegal) and I think we need to come up with a practical resolution for the workers that have been coming here year after year. I appreciated the points you made.
Close the doors, the walls and the tunnels to illegal immigrants! No more wanted, no more desired! The legals are fine! They did it right as my grandparents did over 100 years ago!
If crops are rotting in fields then:
(1) Why are the vegetable bins still full at the supermarket?
(2) Why have there not been complaints from packing houses that there are no vegetables to pack?
(3) Why have there not been complaints from shippers that there are no vegetables to ship?