BROWNSVILLE (Texas) HERALD

December 26, 2008

Guest worker changes proposed

By AARON NELSEN/The Brownsville Herald

BROWNSVILLE - Pending changes to a decades old guest worker program could make it easier for farmers in the Rio Grande Valley to hire foreign workers.

Changes to the H-2A guest worker program would give agricultural employers flexibility to set wage rates and to hire foreign guest workers in the absence of a domestic workforce.

Farmworker advocates have sharply criticized the changes they say would depress wages and undermine working conditions, while the agricultural community claims the new rules do little to address worker shortages.

"This is kind of nibbling around the edges," said Craig Reggelbrugge, co-chair of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform. "But it doesn't even begin to solve the problem."

The Labor Department recently published the final rules for the H-2A program, which will take effect on Jan. 18., just two days before president-elect Barack Obama is sworn in.

The migrant farmworker community in the Rio Grande Valley could be one of the groups most impacted by the program, according to Virginia Ruiz, staff attorney for Farmworker Justice.

"Under these changes its very likely migrant farm workers in the Rio Grande Valley could lose their jobs to foreign workers," Ruiz said. "I'm not really sure who they're trying to please with these rules."

Ray Prewitt, president of Texas Citrus Mutual, called the revisions to the 50-year-old H-2A program a mixed bag, applauding relief on wage rates and transportation costs, but noting that simply tweaking the rules doesn't address long-term labor shortages.

"Comprehensive reform is not happening," Prewitt said, "but the status quo is not acceptable."

The Labor Department has been working since February to revise the program, taking some 11,000 public comments before posting 166
pages worth of revisions and 393 pages of explanatory material on its Web site.

Traditionally, Valley farmers have drawn from a large domestic labor force, but that has changed in recent years.

A longtime hub for migrant farmworkers, the Valley has been losing its farmworkers as farmland is developed and younger workers increasingly turn to higher paying jobs, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture.

The economic downturn has provided temporary relief as unemployed laborers, especially in construction, have returned to the fields, Prewitt said. Prewitt added that without comprehensive change to current immigration laws, Valley farmers will continue to shrink.

In February, the Center for North American Studies at Texas A&M University develop a report that would provide a snapshot of Texas' industry.

The study found that that nearly 66 percent of respondents claimed to have faced labor shortages during the past two seasons and 77 percent said they had reduced the size of their business due to a lack of employees.

"The administration's decision to streamline our current temporary work programs is a positive move that will assist many Texas farmers and ranchers who are facing labor shortages," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. "While this marks an important step in the right direction, I will not be satisfied until we address immigration reform comprehensively."

Cornyn went on to say that he would push for a reform package that fully addresses flaws in the current immigration system.

Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao said the proposed changes would provide farmers with an orderly and timely flow of legalworkers.

In the long run, the latest H-2A changes figure to have a limited impact in the Valley.

Of the estimated 1.6 million farmworkers, only 75,000 foreign guest workers had obtained visas under the H-2A program, according to the Labor Department.

In Texas, the percentage of workers hired under the H-2A program was .5 percent.

The program has been prohibitive for many farmers. In fact the last Valley business to apply for the visa in 2006 ended up not using them.

"We applied for 40, but decided not to use it," said Sally Granados, human resource compliance for Borders Melon Co., Inc. "Its very involved and complicated, so we just felt it would not be feasible to use the visas."

Granados said the business hasn't had a chance to review the revisions to the program, but admitted that if they made the program easier to use they would consider applying again in the future.

Often at odds, farmers and farmworkers do agree on a compromise bill called AgJOBS, which would pave the way for farmworkers already in the country. There are estimated 800,000 undocumented immigrant workers on America's farms today, according to the Labor Department.

Reggelburgge said he'd only just begun studying the changes, calling the document a beast.  He said the discussion could be moot if the changes are blocked by Congress or tied up in court should farmworker advocates file suit.

"Even if they created the perfect guest worker program it can't even begin to solve the problem," Reggelbrugge said.