U.S. let in record 317,000 agricultural guestworkers
With American farmers increasingly relying on foreign agricultural laborers, the Labor Department approved 317,619 seasonal guestworkers during the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, up 15 percent from a year earlier, a farmworker advocacy group said on Tuesday. No paywall
U.S. ‘stabilizes’ H-2A pay rates at 2020 level through 2022
Minimum pay rates for most agricultural guest workers will remain at this year’s levels through 2022 under a regulation announced by the Labor Department on Tuesday. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the regulation demonstrated “President Trump’s commitment to America’s farmers by …
Advocates fear canceling Farm Labor Survey is first step in gutting guest farmworker protections
Farmworker advocates fear the USDA’s decision last month to cancel the Farm Labor Survey is a step toward dismantling the already modest protections for agricultural guestworkers under the H-2A visa program in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.(No paywall)
Farm-labor reform bill heads for House vote this week
Six weeks after sponsors unveiled their plan, the House is scheduled to vote on a bipartisan bill to provide legal status to undocumented farmworkers and to modernize the H-2A guestworker program. If passed, the bill has an uncertain future, with impeachment dominating the congressional agenda and the Republican-run Senate blockading legislation from the Democratic-controlled House.
For livestock groups, USMCA and year-round labor visas are top priorities
Congress should overhaul the U.S. guest worker program so it allows foreign laborers to work year-round on farms and in meat processing plants, rather than just seasonally in the fields, said U.S. poultry and livestock groups on Tuesday. Representatives of six groups also supported prompt …
White House fleshes out immigration plan, but no mention of farm labor
President Trump's proposal for a "merit-based" immigration system that favors younger, highly-trained and high-salary workers is now a 620-page bill that will be released "very soon," said presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner on Tuesday.