Senate committee hears voices for H-2A reform

From farm to table, immigrant workers get the job done. At least for now.

That was the theme of a May 31 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where lawmakers heard impassioned testimony from growers and worker advocates about needed steps to preserve necessary workers in the U.S. food supply chain.

In submitted testimony to the committee, Chalmers Carr III, president and CEO of Titan Farms LLC, Ridge Spring, S.C., outlined the importance of the H-2A workers to his farm, which comprises 6,100 acres of peaches and 700 acres of vegetables. At the same time, he said escalating costs of the program must be tamed for U.S. growers to thrive and for U.S. consumers to see lessened food inflation.

“It is difficult to see how farm and ranch families can expect to stay in business, plan for the future, and compete with heavily subsidized and protected foreign imports under such an unpredictable and unprecedented system,” Carr said. “H-2A wages no longer protect U.S. workers from the adverse effect of foreign labor, as intended. Instead, the H-2A wage system now drives the wage market which, in turn, exacerbates food price inflation."

Titan Farms has used the H-2A program for 25 years and employs more than 830 guest ag workers in six-month to 10-month stints, Carr said in his testimony.

“We are extremely proud to share that we have an annual worker return rate greater than 90%,” he said. “We care about our workers and their families and have developed a long-standing rapport with them, which we believe accounts for our workers rejoining us each season.”

The U.S. has long depended on immigrant farmworkers, but Carr said there is now a substantial shortage of both domestic and foreign workers. That has resulted in higher food inflation and increasing food imports, he said.

Carr said that the current experienced offshore agricultural workforce is aging out and retiring, with many of them returning to their home country of Mexico.

There are not enough new foreign or domestic workers entering the agriculture sector to keep up with the number of workers aging out or moving onto other sectors, he said.

“The growth in the H-2A guest worker program over the last decade clearly highlights this dilemma,” Carr said. “This dramatic growth in the H-2A guest worker program indicates the desperate situation U.S. family farming operations are facing to get sufficient labor. I use the term desperate because I know firsthand that many of my farmer peers declared they would never use a broken, outdated H-2A program to supply labor for their operations, yet over the last 10 years, most all of them have been forced to do so.”

In California, Carr said the H-2A program has grown from 5,000 workers a decade ago to expectations of more than 50,000 in 2023.

Escalating wage rates in the H-2A program are fueling continued food inflation, Carr said.

“Over the last five years, the government has mandated a national Adverse Effect Wage Rate, or AEWR, under the H-2A program that has increased wages by 24% nationally, double that of the previous five years,” he said.

In fact, a new rule from the Department of Labor on H-2A wage rate calculation will add even more costs for U.S. growers.

On average, payroll dollars make up 40% of the production cost of fruits and vegetables, he said, noting that in some crops that number could be as high as 80%.

“In the last four years, food prices have increased by more than 20%, outpacing inflation numbers for all other sectors of the economy other than transportation," Carr said.

He said food inflation is forecast to increase between 6% and 8% this year.

“Americans are today spending more of their disposable dollars on food than they have been, and this trend will not likely stop unless there are reforms to the H-2A program, including a change in the wage methodology of the H-2A guest worker program,” Carr said.

Mexico's heavy subsidization of its specialty crop production is coupled with a daily wage rate of only about $11.50, about 14 times lower than the U.S. H-2A wage rate, Carr said.

“This should be of deep concern to all Americans and serves as yet another reason why we need to revoke the current Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) and halt the Department of Labor from implementing its new AEWR rule.”

Carr said congressional action on the H-2A program should:

• Limit/cap annual wage rate growth; use the CPI annual index and/or limit increases or decreases to no more than 2.5%.
• Modernize and update the H-2A program: Expand the program to all agriculture, year-round and food processors.
• Provide an option for up to a three-year visa for returning workers, eliminating a need for consulate processing and reducing the backlog.
• Allow for staggered arrivals of workers.
• Recognize farmers/H-2A users for housing provided via a tax credit or other method.
• Allow contracts that involve work in more than one area of intended employment.
• Removal of joint employer restrictions now in place because of new H-2A rule.

International Fresh Produce Association member Adam Lytch, regional manager at L&M Farms, also spoke to the committee on the need for comprehensive immigration reform. 

“I would urge Congress and this committee to be supportive of a bill that makes meaningful improvements to the H-2A program and affords increased access and wage stability for farmers and provides legal status to the hundreds of thousands of skilled farmworkers who are working without authorization,” Lytch said in his testimony. “Recent attempts like the Farm Workforce Modernization Act were helpful bipartisan [attempts] to achieve these goals, but more could have been done to ensure a stable workforce that farmers like me need. The agricultural workforce provisions included in the bipartisan Dignity Act, which was recently reintroduced in the House of Representatives, come much closer to providing a complete solution.”

Labor perspective

Diana Tellefson Torres, CEO of the UFW Foundation, said in her submitted testimony to the committee that agricultural employers claim that the H-2A program is not responsive to their needs, but the rapid growth of the program and the Department of Labor’s approval of “almost all employer applications” shows that these complaints are unjustified.

“Some growers bitterly complain about the H-2A program wage rates, but they are merely set at market rates to comply with law,” she said in her testimony. “While employers complain about government oversight of their H-2A participation — we see a lack of enforcement of the rules that leads to deadly consequences.”

However, UFW, during every legislative negotiation aimed at garnering legalization for undocumented workers, has found areas of compromise, including on H-2A program issues, she said.

She said those acceptable changes to the H-2A program would include:

• Expanding the program to include a capped number of year-round agricultural jobs.
• Allowing most farmers to file a single application for staggered seasonal needs.
• Reducing costs of visa processing by allowing H-2A workers to obtain three-year visas.
• Eliminating mid-year/mid-contract wage fluctuations for most jobs.
• Providing employer financial incentives for improving and expanding farmworker housing.

“We have also agreed to E-verify for all workers in the agricultural sector so long as current workers have the opportunity to obtain lawful immigration status and eventual citizenship,” she said. “We have only agreed to these compromises as part of a comprehensive reform that includes a path to citizenship for our nation's undocumented farmworkers and provisions to address the international recruitment process and actual improvements in the H-2A program.”

UFW also insists that H-2A workers be afforded equal rights with other farmworkers and H-2A workers be granted coverage under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, Tellefson Torres said.

“And we have insisted on expanded pathways for H-2A workers who have worked in U.S. agriculture for multiple years to obtain green cards and become citizens,” she said. “By not passing bipartisan agricultural immigration reform that honors the women and men who feed us, Congress is making an active choice to support a deeply flawed system, harming both workers and law-abiding employers.”