Both the United Farm Workers and the Heritage Foundation have protested the Trump administration’s decision to cut guest workers’ wages to ease the farm labor crisis exacerbated by deportations.
Juana Summers, host:
Most of the people who tend America’s farms were born elsewhere. Increasingly, they are foreign guest workers holding H-2A visas. The Trump administration has made it easier and cheaper for farmers to hire guest workers. This could mean fewer jobs and lower wages for domestic farm workers, and both conservative and liberal groups agree that is the wrong move. Frank Morris reports from member station KCUR.
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FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: On a vast hay and row-crop farm near Belleville, Kansas, the geographic center of the United States, three Mexican nationals are at work diligently preparing field equipment for spring planting.
Thayne Larson: Yeah, you don’t see a phone in anyone’s hand trying to – you know, looking at social media or…
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Larson: That’s what you get, just work, work, work.
MORRIS: Thayne Larson hired these people and brought them to his farm after they got H-2A visas. He says they are absolutely vital to his operation because no one looking for a job here wants the long hours and difficult conditions of farm work.
LARSON: Yeah, that’s the frustrating part and we’ve really had to try to figure out the H-2A program, because you know, you’re not replacing workers here. They’re just filling a void that you can’t do. If you’re going to be in this business, you have to find people.
MORRIS: Finding people to run some farms is a big issue in some parts of rural America. This has led to the rapid expansion of the H-2A visa system. Over the past two decades, it has grown from about 50,000 workers to nearly 400,000 last year, according to the USDA. It attracts people like Jose Reyes, who has worked at Larson’s farm for 15 consecutive years.
Jose Reyes: Yes, there are a lot of opportunities coming here to work legally and send some money to Mexico, support your family.
MORRIS: Larson says he could use a lot more H-2A workers. He has a house for them which is completely vacant. But he says the H-2A program has become too complex and expensive. Growth in agricultural wages has outpaced inflation. Larson says his total H-2A labor costs, including travel and housing, have increased to an average of about $30 an hour. Some farmers say rising farm wages are reflected in higher food costs at the grocery store and make domestic food less competitive with imports. Last time, the Labor Department suddenly changed the way it calculated H-2A wages, which cut worker wages.
LARSON: Of course, it had to happen, because you weren’t able to pay.
Morris: The new rule also allows employers to start charging for accommodations they previously provided for free. For some farm workers, this was a $5 an hour pay cut. John Miano of the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform says it was a massive transfer of wealth from workers to employers.
John Miano: It provides subsidies to employers to bypass the free market. I could turn to a massive influx of cheap foreign labor that undercuts Americans.
MORRIS: Miano favors strict limits on immigration. But in a rare alignment between normally disparate groups, he agreed with the United Farm Workers union on new wage rules. Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, says lower guest worker wages will hurt all farm workers.
Teresa Romero: How do you put America first and how can this population work so hard, now get paid less and be replaced by people who will stay here for a few months and go back home?
MORRIS: The Farm Workers Union has filed a lawsuit to stop the pay cuts. It has been argued that they have illegally driven down wages for domestic farm workers, including citizens, legal residents on work permits, and even undocumented workers. Romero says the administration is putting them in a bad situation.
Romero: What he’s doing, you know, the deportations and the pay cuts, are a one-two punch. You know, workers are intimidated when you reduce their wages.
Morris: While farm labor unions and immigration radicals are pushing for the administration’s H-2A visa changes, bipartisan legislation in Congress would expand the program. Current bills would allow H-2A visa workers to stay longer and slow wage increases. For NPR News, I’m Frank Morris.
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