Farmers look for labor fix in immigration reform
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Texas farmers are hoping a streamlined guest worker program that provides a legal workforce to harvest their crops will be part of any immigration reform that emerges from Congress.
Farm worker representatives, meanwhile, are pressing for protections against reductions in laborers’ wages.
"The lack of labor is part of every discussion I have with our agricultural producers today," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples told the San Antonio Express-News (bit.ly/16KXHBA ). "It’s very real, and I believe they share my sentiment that Americans should have the first opportunity to get in line for a job. But the lines aren’t forming."
The Associated Press reported recently that a tentative deal had been reached between those representing the farmers and those representing farm workers. Agricultural workers have been one of the outstanding issues for Senate negotiators crafting a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
For farmers, immigration is an economic question. Too often the supply of workers has been unreliable and farmers say the existing guest worker program is too cumbersome.
Dimmit County onion farmer Bruce Frasier said he never knows how many workers will show up.
Living only an hour from the Texas-Mexico border, Frasier is more fortunate than most. Farm workers regularly crossing from Mexico are brought to his fields. He said he checks on whether they can work legally, but never knows how many will come.
"In the end, my crop won’t wait," he wrote in a November Express-News opinion piece. "If I can’t find enough willing and able U.S. workers, I need a fast, legal, reliable way to hire foreign farmhands."
The existing guest worker program for farmers requires them to first show the government that there weren’t enough American workers or legal residents to fill the need and that bringing in foreign workers won’t lower wages.
Also, those imported workers are only allowed to work for the farmer who brought them rather than following the harvest.
About 48 percent of farm laborers are not working legally in the U.S., according to a National Agricultural Workers Survey. The United Farm Workers put that number higher, estimating that 1 million of the 1.6 million farm laborers in the U.S. are not in the country legally.
Kristi Boswell, of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said growers are looking for a way to retain their experienced workers.
"Whether that’s a pathway to citizenship or some other form of legal status, from agriculture’s perspective, that’s a political question that will be addressed at a higher level," she said.
But farm worker representatives worry a more permissive system to import inexpensive foreign labor would lower wages for everyone.
"An agreement has been difficult to get to because many grower associations have tried to erode any progress farm workers have made," United Farm Workers spokeswoman Maria Machuca said. "It would be a grievous mistake to allow agribusiness to use the debate over immigration reform to further reduce wages of the poorest workers in the country."