As captured in the recent New York Times article, Illegal Immigration Is Down, Changing the Face of California Farms, agricultural labor demographics have changed considerably, resulting in less available domestic workers to fill on-farm jobs in agriculture. The Times reporter used the Salinas Valley as his focus for this article.
As the Times article points out, an aging population in the ag workforce and the lack of an influx of new entrants into the local agricultural labor pool have resulted in a labor shortage.
To meet the needs of producing fresh produce, employers have turned to the federal H2A guestworker visa program to capture interest and fill available jobs from interested applicants.
Here, employers aren’t choosing guestworkers over domestic workers. They’re using the H2A program out of necessity.
As the program requires, the employer first commits to finding available labor domestically. If there is inadequate labor available to grow and harvest the crops, then farm employers can use the legal guestworker H2A visa program.
Under the program, the employer must pay a wage rate that has been established by the U.S. Department of Labor. This wage must be applied similarly to domestically employed workers.
In California’s Salinas Valley, the H2A base wage is higher than the state’s minimum wage and therefore establishes a higher minimum base wage that applies to both the H2A guestworker and the local worker.
Ag employers who hire workers through the H2A program only employ these temporary workers for a few months.
Taking into consideration the housing markets, it would be daunting for guest workers to attempt to find housing on a temporary basis. This is part of the reason providing housing is a requirement of employers. Other H2A legal requirements:
- Employee housing must be inspected and meet federal Dept. of Labor, state, and local safety standards.
- Employers must either provide three meals per day for each employee, or the housing must have kitchen facilities, and employees are given a food allowance.
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It should be noted that issuing visas to guestworkers during labor shortages is not exclusive to agriculture. Other industries also rely on foreign visas, including technology, tourism, construction, manufacturing, and health care.
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Original Article: www.nytimes.com/2022/05/28/business/economy/immigration-california-farm-labor.html?searchResultPosition=1