Agribusiness Seeks Influx Of Farm Workers Guest-Worker Program Would Give Growers Cheap Labor Supply, Critics Say
In Washington state’s apple country, Rocky DeVon says he frequently can’t find enough workers to pick his 52-acre orchard.
Local folks around Oroville, Wash., aren’t interested in farm work, he said, and some immigrants are afraid to take the jobs paying up to $100 a day because of stepped-up efforts by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to catch illegal aliens.
Because of a labor scramble at exactly the wrong time, DeVon lost about $100,000 in the past harvest because he was forced to pick apples that were either too green or too ripe.
“There are definitely spot shortages of labor,” DeVon said. “The American people don’t want to do this work. Without immigrant labor, this country will starve to death.”
It’s a national problem, some Republicans in Congress say, and they are pushing legislation to create a new guest-worker program to give temporary visas to 40,000 people over the next two years to work in five yet-to-be-selected areas. The measure is now moving in the House.
The main sponsor, Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Smith, said the current temporary immigrant labor program is too complex, requires a 60-day lead time and doesn’t allow for spot shortages that are particularly acute in vegetable and fruit crops.
“Farmers are facing a labor crisis,” said Smith, R-Ore. “We depend upon these people who follow the crops.”
The measure is drawing fire from the Clinton administration, labor unions and farm-worker advocates. They contend that agribusinesses don’t want to pay decent wages needed to attract local help and are seeking another avenue to bring in aliens eager to work for next to nothing.
“It sounds like another sellout deal to provide growers with a cheap labor supply,” said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the California-based United Farm Workers union. “There is no farm labor shortage. There hasn’t been one for decades.”
Indeed, the General Accounting Office recently concluded that no national farm labor shortage exists, but auditors conceded “potential for more localized shortages” in some growing regions.
That same audit estimated 600,000 of the current 1.6 million farm workers are in the country illegally. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said the problem is expected to worsen and could inflict more shortages on growers if immigration agents are able to catch more of them.
“We need to curtail illegal immigration and still provide farmers with a legitimate work force,” he said.
Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration panel, said he shares some worries of the critics, including the possibility that some of the new guest workers won’t leave and that their presence could depress wages and working conditions by relaxing requirements in areas such as housing.
Still, he added, “I think we should be willing to test the concept.”
But Bruce Goldstein of the Farmworker Justice Fund said such proposed changes as allowing employers discretion about whether to provide housing and eliminating some wage guarantees should not be tested even in a pilot program.
“I view this as political pork for agribusiness,” Goldstein said. “They are trying to test whether people will come to the United States for even lower wages and worse working conditions than are allowed by law.”
The bill does provide an incentive for workers to return to their country of origin by withholding a portion of their wages unless they go back within two years. In addition, two other visa programs would be reduced by 10,000 recipients each year to offset any potential increase in illegal aliens caused by the pilot program.
As it stands, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman said she would recommend that President Clinton veto the legislation. In a letter to Lamar Smith, she said the Labor and Agriculture departments are attempting to streamline the existing temporary foreign worker program to deal with the spot shortages and reduce the lead time for farmer requests from 60 days to 45 days.
“We acknowledge that there have been difficulties,” Herman wrote. “However, none of these difficulties requires legislation. All can be effectively addressed administratively.”
xxxx IN CONGRESS Some Republicans are pushing legislation to create a new guest-worker program to give temporary visas to 40,000 people over the next two years to work in five yet-to-be-selected areas. The measure is now moving in the House.