Growers and contractors in California recruited 14,252 foreign guestworkers last year, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The figure was up 28 percent from the previous year, and nearly three times the national growth rate, according to the data, the Times said. Since 2011, the guestworker program has grown seven-fold.
Despite President Trump’s vow to clamp down on immigration, American workers “have not been showing up for field jobs, despite wages that have grown 13 percent from 2010 to 2015, twice as fast as average pay in the state, a Times analysis shows.”
The paper cited California vineyard manager Chris Bowland, who traveled “to small villages in the Mexican state of Michoacan, where he recruited a dozen agricultural guestworkers under a federal visa program called H-2A.” Bowland had no trouble contracting a dozen workers, the paper said. “That’s all that I could afford,” he said. “I could’ve had 60 to 80 guys, easily, that were capable, wanting to work, ready to work,” Bowland said. “So, there isn’t a shortage of people wanting to get involved in this program. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people.”
Bowland employs about 120 workers in a season to tend about 500 acres of vineyards. He offers locals $14 to $15 per hour, he told the paper. The federal minimum for foreign guestworkers in California rose to $13.18 this year, up from last year’s $12.57, the paper said.
That 4.85 percent increase, which went into effect earlier this month, marks the third straight year that guestworker wages rose at rates above the state’s overall wage growth. Since 2013, the federally mandated minimum for guestworkers in California has increased 22 percent, according to Labor Department data.