The U.S. would scrap its much-criticized H-2A system of short-term visas for agricultural workers and replace it with an H-2C program that allows foreign laborers to stay in the country for up to three years under a bill filed by House Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte. The bill also would allow those laborers, for the first time, to work in dairies and processing plants. The committee is scheduled to vote on the bill on Wednesday, at a moment when lawmakers want to resolve the issue of “dreamers,” youths brought illegally into the U.S. by their parents.
A former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Goodlatte proposed similar H-2C legislation in 2013 when conservative House Republicans quashed comprehensive immigration reform.
The new bill shifts control of the visa program from the Labor Department to the USDA, allows a lower pay rate than now required, and relieves employers of responsibility to provide transportation and housing to foreign laborers. Workers would be free to quit a job and look for work with another agribusiness employer once the E-Verify system is in place to ensure that the job applicant can work legally in the United States.
Goodlatte said the bill creates a “flexible and market-driven guest-worker program that is designed to meet the needs of a diverse agriculture industry when not enough American workers can be found.” Farm groups welcomed the bill as an answer to growing shortage of workers. The National Pork Producers Council said the H-2C program would open the door to an inflow of agricultural labor and allow undocumented workers to keep their jobs. The undocumented workers would be required to leave the country and be hired back.
“This bill creates a modern-day Bracero program and would undermine the wages and working conditions of all agricultural workers,” said the United Farm Workers union, referring to a post-World War II program that allowed millions of Mexicans to work on U.S. farms. The program was abused and drove down farm wages. The UFW said Congress should focus “on the one thing that could stabilize agriculture quickly — providing farmworkers already laboring in the United States with a path to lawful permanent residency and eventual citizenship.”
More than half of U.S. farmworkers are believed to be undocumented. House and Senate Democrats have filed bills to create a “blue card” that would authorize the presence of undocumented farm workers who pay a fine and pass a background check. The bills offer a three-to-five-year path to citizenship for workers who stay in agriculture.
Goodlatte’s bill would authorize 500,000 H-2C visas each year, not counting the returning ag workers and undocumented workers who register in the new system. The bill also would allot 100,000 green cards annually, giving residency to experienced agricultural workers. Many H-2C visas would last for 18 months. Three-year visas would be available for workers in specialized or hard-to-fill jobs. Workers would be require to return to their home countries for at least a month when their visas expire.
To assure that workers leave the United States, 10 percent of their wages would be paid only when they appear at a U.S. embassy or consulate in their home country.
To read the Judiciary Committee summary of the bill, click here.
For the text of the bill, click here.