By Arturo S. Rodriguez
The past year’s abortive debate in Congress over comprehensive immigration reform may have boosted ratings for talk radio, but did little or nothing to solve our nation’s immigration problem, and in particular the problem facing American agriculture which is heavily dependent on immigrant labor.
There are currently an estimated 2.5 million workers in the United States who are employed in agriculture at some point during the year. Between 60 to 75 percent aren’t legally authorized to work here.
These numbers won’t be changing anytime soon. Granted, some jobs will be mechanized while others may go overseas. But the reality is that American agriculture won’t disappear and neither will the need for labor that often requires experience and skill. No amount of rhetoric by anti-immigrant pundits such as Lou Dobbs or Rep. Tom Tancredo, (R-CO) will change that.
For the past eight years the United Farm Workers and leaders in the nation’s agricultural industry have been working together to pass an historic bipartisan bill known as AgJOBS, which would provide agriculture with a legal workforce.
To date, AgJOBS has been blocked from moving forward either as part of comprehensive immigration reform or as stand-alone legislation by the obstructionist tactics and demagogy of those who equate any measure to regularize the status of the current workforce with “amnesty.” Despite these setbacks, we intend to work with our Congressional allies to keep AgJOBS on the agenda for this year, realizing that we face an uphill battle in an election year where immigration is seen as a wedge issue.
Yet the situation appears that it is going to get even worse. While Congress has failed to act, the Bush Administration wants to make a bad situation worse. Instead of supporting the AgJOBS compromise, the Administration is preparing to issue new regulations which will remove most of the protections for US workers under the H-2A program. The H2A program allows foreign workers to legally enter the US when stateside farmers have certified that there are insufficient domestic workers available to work. The new regulations will dramatically lower the wage which must be paid to employ H-2A guest workers. The intent is to encourage the growers to bring even more foreign agricultural workers into the United States without doing anything to regularize the status of workers already here (workers in unauthorized status are barred under current law from participating in the H-2A program). The result will surely be lower wages and make working conditions even worse for all farm workers.
The UFW will do everything in its power to stop these new regulations from going into effect. Even without these changes, the current H-2A program is rife with fraud and abuse. Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2A guest workers — but they exist mainly on paper. We have joined with other farm worker advocates to sue DOL for its failure to comply with existing regulations and have repeatedly raised our concerns with members of Congress.
Because H2A workers are tied to the employer who obtained the visa on their behalf and are therefore dependent on the good will of that employer for future employment under the program, H-2A workers have no bargaining power for better wages and working conditions and are powerless to complain of violation of their rights. Decades of experience have shown that the U.S. Department of Labor is either incapable or unwilling to protect the rights of these workers.
US workers are systematically discriminated against in the hiring process because employers have to pay FICA and unemployment taxes on US workers’ wages while the wages of H-2A workers are exempt from these taxes. Moreover, the Department of Labor has completely ignored its statutory mandate to require growers to take positive steps to recruit US workers for these jobs.
For these reasons, our brothers and sisters in the AFL-CIO have called for the end of guest worker programs such as the H-2A program and the admission of future foreign workers as permanent residents with full rights at the onset. There are strong arguments for adopting such a position and it is one we respect. However, we believe that the present situation calls for one more effort to create a humane guest worker program which protects the rights of both guest workers and US workers. The reforms contained in AgJOBS are a step in the right direction, but something more is needed. We don’t believe a guest worker program can be successful without making union representation available to the guest workers. As such, we call for a guest worker program which:
• Guarantees guest workers freedom of association and the right to join a union;
• Provides workers with an effective grievance system to expeditiously enforce the terms of their work contracts;
• Is free from retaliation and blacklisting;
• Bans the exploitive practice of middlemen charging workers recruitment fees either here or abroad;
• Provides the guest workers who have worked in the US for an agreed upon number of years with the opportunity to apply for permanent resident status if they so desire; and
• Protects US workers through an open and transparent recruitment process.
We realize that such reforms may not all be implemented at once, but they will be the principles by which to judge future proposals to reform or change the H-2A program. If events demonstrate that these goals cannot be achieved within the current structure of our guest worker programs, then we will join the call for the abolition of these programs.
Our demands for worker justice do not end at the border. Today around the world more than 120,000,000 workers are working outside of their home country. It seems to make little difference whether they are employed through legal guest worker programs or as unauthorized migrants. Everywhere these workers are abused and exploited by the traffickers and international merchants of labor. Their fight is our fight.
In the twentieth century, the UFW was focused on the plight of migrant farm workers within the United States; in the twenty-first century, we join with labor activists around the globe to build a worldwide movement to bring social justice to the transnational movement of workers.
We plan to start with the H-2A program.
Arturo S. Rodriguez is president of the United Farm Workers of America