Number 12, December 2011
briefing paper
Laura Elizabeth Pohl
Farm Workers and Immigration
Policy
by Andrew Wainer
Key Points
• The U.S. food system—and particularly fruit and vegetable production—
depends on immigrants more than any sector of the U.S. economy. It is up
to policymakers to help the public understand the role of immigrant farm
workers in the U.S. agricultural system.
• Immigrant farm workers should have a legal means of being in the United
States. The approximately 1.1 million unauthorized immigrant farm
laborers in the United States do work that citizens will not perform and
that farmers need.
• Our agricultural guest worker mechanism—the H-2A program—is regarded
as onerous by growers and exploitative by farm worker advocates. The
AgJobs proposal reforms the H-2A program to make it acceptable to
both groups.
• H-2A reform should also promote economic development in the rural
Mexican communities where two-thirds of hired farm workers originate.
By integrating these communities as stakeholders in the agricultural guest
worker system, they can develop alternatives to unauthorized immigration.
Andrew Wainer is immigration policy analyst for Bread for the World Institute.
Bread for the World Institute provides policy
analysis on hunger and strategies to end it.
The Institute educates its network, opinion
leaders, policy makers and the public about
hunger in the United States and abroad.
www.bread.org
Abstract
For more than a century, agriculture
has been an entry point into the labor market for immigrants in the United States.
Presently, close to three-fourths of all U.S.
hired farm workers are immigrants, most
of them unauthorized. Their unauthorized
legal status, low wages, and an inconsistent
work schedule contribute to a precarious
economic state.
Immigrant farm workers fill low-wage
jobs that citizens are reluctant to take. Attempts to recruit citizens for farm worker
jobs have failed. Domestic production of
fruits and vegetables could decrease without immigrant farm workers.
In spite of the role they play in U.S. agriculture, unauthorized immigrant farm
workers labor under increasingly hostile
conditions. The Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security bill (AgJOBS)
was developed by farmers and farmworker
advocates to regularize the status of workers in the agriculture sector. Public concern
about unauthorized immigration has held
up prospects of enacting the bill into law.
Farm workers should be legalized so
they can work without fear of deportation
and so that farmers have access to workers
they need. Immigrant agricultural workers
can also support human capital renewal on
farms struggling to recruit the next generation of farm operators. Rural communities
in Mexico—where immigrant farm workers
originate—should be integrated into a U.S.
agricultural guest worker program that
benefits U.S. and Mexican farmers.