By Natalie Navarrete
After a press conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, President Donald Trump’s administration announced a plan to expand the H-2A visa program in accordance with the number of workers needed to fill open positions in American companies. For an administration characterized by anti-immigration sentiment and rhetoric, this decision may come as a surprise to many. However, closer examination reveals that H-2A expansion would only reinforce the message President Trump emphasized, in his most recent State of the Union address, to replace “our outdated and randomized immigration system with one based on merit,” by mirroring the motivations behind practices such as the infamous family separation, or “zero tolerance,” policy and changes in precedents in immigration courts.
The H-2A visa program allows American companies to bring in foreign workers to fill temporary agricultural jobs. The administration wants to increase the number of these types of visas while denying applicants to other visa programs if they do not meet certain income standards because it focuses on the economic growth brought by immigration rather than addressing immigration for purely humanitarian needs, which is less likely to bring profits to the U.S.
One of the reasons that this administration has tried to limit immigration has been to preserve “American jobs” for American workers. The H-2A visa program ensures this protection. To qualify for an H-2A visa, the employer has to demonstrate that there are not enough Americans “able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work,” and that, by hiring immigrants, the wages of American workers will not suffer.
H-2A visas are not free of controversy, however. Immigrants under the H-2A visa are often exploited both in their application process and once they have secured employment in the United States. A lack of government oversight by the Department of Labor (DOL) has left H-2A workers vulnerable to abusive fees from employment recruiters, which leaves them in debt before they even secure employment. Additionally, H-2A workers often face working conditions worse than their American counterparts without a legal means of addressing these issues.
To ensure that employers do not take advantage of H-2A workers, the DOL signed a bilateral agreement with Guatemala in July. The agreement would strengthen the DOL’s processes and checks on employers to ensure that H-2A workers aren’t taken advantage of. This agreement has yet to be tested in the context and volume necessary to determine its success.
Even if the DOL adopts these changes quickly, deeper issues with the H-2A visa have yet to be addressed. American farmers also suffer under the current H-2A visa system due to lengthy wait times that have delayed the arrival of workers who have submitted successful applications every year since 2014. This delay, often caused by problems with scheduling appointments at the United States Consulate, can cost farmers up to $300,000. This problem only grows more dire as the number of farms dependent on H-2A visa labor has increased by 40% in the past five years. Farmers credit this boom in the demand for H-2A workers to an aging population of American workers which is not being filled by younger generations because of stagnant wages in the agriculture industry. In fact, in order to make wages viable for local workers, they would need to be raised well above the average pay of migrant workers, which is around $11.74 an hour, including food housing, and travel. Instead, the solution supported by American farmers themselves is the creation of a consistent pool of migrant workers from which to hire. Creating an easier path to citizenship is the best way to protect migrant workers from exploitation while shielding American farmers from unnecessary financial losses
Once the practices, procedures, and precedents tied to H-2A visas are taken into account, it is clear that this decision continues a pattern in the Trump administration’s immmigration policy. The administration continues to implement changes to the immigration system that do not address the root cause of the problem, exacerbating the negative consequences associated with the system. Increasing the intake of H-2A visa workers without addressing the backlog within the application process will only further increase the wait times for migrant workers to enter the United States. This means more time that immigrants are vulnerable to abusive “recruitment fees” which leave them indebted to their employers. Not only are the seasonal workers hurt, but the very population that this administration champions—American workers and companies—will also suffer . In fact, this policy will increase the losses that American farmers have to face as they enter harvesting seasons without a sufficient workforce.