Despite Other Viable Options, Ag Industry Presses for Guest Worker Amnesty

By Joe Guzzardi
February 21, 2014

Last week, the American Farm Bureau Federation issued a report on how an enforcement-first immigration bill would create economic disaster for the agriculture industry. As the AFB outlines it, production costs would soar, yields would drop, and farm assets would plunge in value. If millions of illegal immigrant workers were removed from the ag labor pool through E-Verify or some other enforcement measure, the industry would have to recruit from the construction labor pool and pay between $20-$25 per hour. The AFB hopes that Congress, after reading its frightening predictions, will conclude that an amnesty bill which requires enforcement first should be defeated.

For years, the ag industry has falsely insisted that without more guest workers, crops would rot. In 2008, California Senator Dianne Feinstein said: “It’s an emergency. If you can’t get people to prune, to plant, to pick, to pack, you can’t run a farm.”

Feinstein and others in Congress repeat the same claim every year without a shred of supporting evidence. To the contrary, in many states yields have increased and often hit record levels. Based on the latest available data, the Department of Agriculture projects that 2013 farm incomes will reach $121 billion, a total that when adjusted for inflation, will be the highest since 1973. And, it further anticipates that increases in farm asset values will continue to exceed increases in farm debt, netting record farm equity highs. This is hardly the scary scenario the AFB would like Congress to buy into.

The ABF purposely omitted two key variables from its economic analysis. First, farms don’t attract local labor because they don’t pay as much as other jobs where the work is performed in more a more comfortable indoor environment: cashiers, waiters or warehouse personnel. Hence, the alleged labor shortage. The argument should not be that Americans won’t do farm work but rather that Americans generally won’t do farm labor at the existing indentured servants’ pay rate.

Second, the Department of Labor already has a visa in place that allows growers to bring in an unlimited number of ag workers. The H-2A visa program allows employers to hire seasonal foreign workers when (1) U.S. workers are not available, and (2) the hiring of the H-2A worker does not diminish U.S. workers’ wages or their working conditions. 

Employers criticize the H-2A as being too cumbersome. What they mean is that under the H-2A employers are responsible for the immigrants’ visa fees, inbound and outbound transportation as well as subsistence during their travel. Farmers therefore prefer to hire illegal immigrants because they’re cheaper. 

Amnesty is all about more cheap labor, not avoiding consumer price increases which would be negligible. University of California Davis Professor Philip Martin crunched farm wage statistics and found that if they rose 40 percent, each household would spend about $15 more a year for produce, but each seasonal farm worker would be lifted above the federal poverty line. 

Legislation that would allow employers to exploit agricultural workers, as the industry has done since the 1940s Bracero program, is unworthy of the U.S. with its long-standing tradition of treating immigrants with dignity and giving them a true opportunity at a better life.

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow whose columns have been nationally syndicated since 1987. Contact him at [email protected]