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ANLA defends need for viable H-2A program
19 Nov, 2009 LDB SolutionsThe American Nursery & Landscape Association (ANLA) recently submitted official comments on the Department of Labor’s (DOL) proposal to overhaul the H-2A agricultural temporary and seasonal guest worker program.
ANLA generally opposed the proposal on the grounds that it would make the already-cumbersome and unpopular H-2A program more burdensome, bureaucratic, and unresponsive. While a number of nursery operations use the program, at the present time, H-2A only provides about three percent of the hired farm labor force in the U.S. Meanwhile, government statistics coupled with private estimates suggest that more than half, and perhaps three quarters, of farm workers are falsely documented and lack proper work authorization.
DOL’s proposed rule is the latest episode in a regulatory soap opera. In February, 2008, the Bush Administration DOL proposed sweeping changes to H-2A. Those changes were made final on Dec. 18, 2008, and took effect on Jan. 17, 2009. DOL was immediately sued by farm worker advocates, but the rules were implemented anyway. The labor advocate suit is still pending. In March, the Obama Administration’s DOL proposed to suspend the rules, but the suspension, scheduled to take effect on June 29, was temporarily blocked by a federal district court judge in North Carolina. So instead, DOL moved to rewrite the program.
The DOL’s latest proposal reverses several program changes achieved by the Bush regulations which were popular with many growers, like the creation of a simplified application process, and a new wage structure that reduced mandated wages for many, but not all, growers. Yet, at the same time, it retains and even adds to much stricter enforcement, debarment, and penalty provisions that were featured in the Bush rules as a trade-off for a simplified process.
ANLA’s official statement emphasized that only balanced legislative reforms to H-2A, such as those featured in the AgJOBS legislation, will provide a stable and predictable program.
“Detailed legislative reforms such as those in AgJOBS would limit future labor secretaries’ discretion to change the program to suit shifting policy preferences,” said Craig Regelbrugge, ANLA’s vice president for government relations and research. ANLA urged DOL to refrain from rewriting the H-2A program rules now, and to shift focus to supporting Congressional action on immigration reform that includes AgJOBS.
ANLA’s full statement can be viewed at www.ANLA.org.
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