Farmers say they walk a line between bankruptcy and committing a crime because of their reliance on illegal labor, said Kerry Whitson, a plum farmer and president of the Tulare County Farm Bureau in California. Wages in the depressed farm economy fail to attract domestic workers, he said. It becomes so fraught with fraudulent documentation, that becomes a nightmare in itself. The H-2A visa program allows foreigners to work on farms as many as 10 months a year at a federally calculated wage rate in housing that farmers must provide. Critics say the program allows unscrupulous employers to abuse workers by threatening to have them deported if they demand better wages or conditions.
Farmers also complain about the program.
The cumbersome application process takes months, which farmers say is too long for them to wait when they need laborers quickly to respond to sudden weather changes that alter planting and harvesting schedules. Despite complaints, the number of workers covered by the visas has grown from 15,000 in 1996 to nearly 42,000 in 1999, according to the Labor Department. The compromise plan would shorten the visa application process from months to days. Now, U.S. inspectors investigate farmers to ensure they will pay adequate wages and provide housing before issuing visas. The bill would let farmers obtain visas by promising to adhere to federal laws.