Agencies rewriting rules for foreign farmworkers

WASHINGTON – With a nationwide farmworker shortage threatening to leave unharvested fruits and vegetables rotting in fields, the Bush administration has begun quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers legally can be brought into the country.

The urgent effort, under way at the U.S. departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor, is meant to rescue farm owners caught in a vise between an impossibly complex process to hire legal guest-workers and stepped-up enforcement that has reduced the number of undocumented planters, pickers and even middle managers crossing the border.

The push to speedily rewrite the regulations is also the Bush administration’s attempt to step into the breach left when Congress failed to pass an immigration overhaul in June.

On all sides of the farm industry, the administration’s behind-the-scenes initiative to revamp H2A farmworker visas is fraught with anxiety. Immigrant advocates fear the changes will come at the expense of worker protections because the administration has received and reportedly is acting on extensive input from farm lobbyists. And farmers worry the administration’s changes will not happen soon enough for the 2008 growing season.

Officials at the three federal agencies are scrutinizing the regulations to see if they can adjust the farmworker program, a highly bureaucratic system so unwieldy that less than 2 percent of American farms use it to bring in foreign workers. They are considering a series of changes, including lengthening the time workers can stay, expanding the types of work they can do, simplifying how their applications are processed and even redefining terms such as “temporary.”

The agencies also are working on possible changes to a separate visa H2B program that brings in seasonal workers for resorts, clam-shucking operations and horse stables, among other businesses.