The H-2A guest worker visa program was codified via the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) on Nov. 6, 1986. In honor of the program’s 40th anniversary, “The Packer Podcast” hosted a special episode featuring Lynn Jacquez, principal at CJ Lake; John Hollay, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers; and Samantha Ayoub, director of workforce and business policy for the International Fresh Produce Association.
As counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during IRCA’s drafting, Jacquez observed the program’s origins firsthand. She says H-2A began as a treaty program for a company operating in the British West Indies and Central America that wanted to keep using it. The program had been in place since 1952, and at the time of IRCA, roughly 27,000 to 30,000 workers used it. That number has jumped to more than 400,000 today.
“It saddens me that 40 years later, No. 1, we were not really able to enact the program that was specifically crafted to address our fresh fruit and vegetable labor-intensive sector and that we have not significantly achieved some of the reforms in the treaty-based H-2A program, which is actually a lot older than 40 years,” she says.
Decades of Policy Inaction
Hollay says reaching this 40th anniversary reflects four decades of policymakers ignoring agricultural labor needs. While the agriculture industry awaits Congress to resume work on the farm bill and labor reform, Hollay says the milestone is worth celebrating. Still, it’s important to see it in context.
“That’s going to be the seventh farm bill that we’ll celebrate since we’ve passed labor reform,” he says. “There is still something to celebrate because we need that lifeline, but if we don’t change, it really is going to turn much more sour.”
Jacquez says that as she and lawmakers worked to draft the program, nobody envisioned agriculture evolving from a field-based seasonal endeavor into year-round greenhouse production. The program was simply a replenishment program for specialty crop ag workers.
“This program was never intended nor designed nor written to address the long-term labor costs of the agricultural sector,” she says.
Ayoub says that evolution of the modern-day fresh produce industry with 365-day production stands in stark contrast to the seasonal nature of the H-2A program. She says the CEA industry “works very hard to invest in American agriculture, to invest in the newest technologies and scaling their production, but still has a labor requirement that they can’t meet.”
Rising Wage Pressures and Non-Wage Costs
Hollay points to the divergence between modern agricultural methods and an unevolved H-2A program as the central labor conflict.
“As we look for efficiencies in agriculture and as new commodities come online with new production methods, they’ve often been on the outside looking in on viable labor solutions,” he says. “That’s the fight that we’ve all been part of now for many, many years, now going on 40 years.”
The other challenge, Hollay says, is that while growers struggle to find the labor to do the work, they also struggle with rising input costs.
“[For] labor costs, particularly for those who have been relying on foreign workers and the H-2A program, and now really everybody at large, the wage has been going up over time at a rate that has been completely out of control,” he says. “In some states you’re seeing 20% increases.”
Adding to that are increased energy prices, water challenges and trade instability, all of which are out of growers’ control, Hollay says.
Beyond rising input costs, the H-2A program itself carries a heavy price tag. Ayoub estimates application fees, housing, transportation and higher wages cost a grower about $11,000 per worker for the program.
“We are also far from the only country that has guest worker programs to try and fill workforce shortages, particularly in agriculture, but when you look at the U.S. H-2A program … workers are generally taking home about 85% of their paycheck,” she says, noting growers absorb a significant amount of the non-wage costs.
But when comparing those take-home rates in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, workers take home roughly 65% to 70% of their paycheck because workers absorb more of the non-wage costs.
A Call To Start From Scratch
Looking back on the H-2A program and where it is now, compared with its creation in 1986, Jacquez says she’d love to see it start from scratch to address the realities of agriculture today, from seasonal needs to year-round needs to surge needs to long-term needs.
“I understand there are many, many people that have invested a significant amount of resources and time in order to make it work,” she says of the current H-2A program. “It’s like fitting a square peg into a round hole.”
While it might be easier to have policy and reforms tweak the current program, Jacquez says, “we need to push forward with as many of the revisions of the existing program as we can in the short term, [while] continuing to develop very meaningful and viable policy for workforce development writ large in the ag sector.”
One of those potential reforms is the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act, which House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson introduced. Hollay says that as Congress reconvenes, it’s important agriculture continues to build momentum and show legislators there’s still work to do.
“The important thing now is making sure that we demonstrate the continued need so that as leaders are looking at the limited time they have and the different priorities that need to get addressed, we’ve demonstrated that ours is ready for prime time,” he says.
