Farm Workers and Immigration

While immigration reform is a long-term struggle, the H-2A agricultural guest worker program may more expeditiously work better for growers, farm workers, and immigrant-sending communities in Latin America. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s model attempts to address immigrant agricultural labor issues from both sides of the border.

Hired farm work is among the lowest-paid work in the country. Although immigrant farm workers have higher incomes in the United States than at home, they don’t always escape poverty as they had hoped.

The H-2A agricultural guest worker program, although dysfunctional, will probably grow. The beginnings of a framework exist that envisions the H-2A program as a way to benefit both growers in the United States and sending communities in Mexico.

There is no evidence that removing immigrants from farm labor would create job vacancies that unemployed citizens would fill, because farm work is one of the most hazardous occupations in the United States.

More than 75 percent of all hired farm workers in the United States work on the labor-intensive crops of vegetables, fruits, and horticulture. Many states, such as Michigan and Georgia, depend on these labor-intensive crops for economic growth.

U.S. agriculture has long been a point of entry into the labor market for immigrants, and the agriculture sector has been dependent on immigrant labor for more than a century.

In 2000, after decades of wrangling over the contours of an updated guest worker program, the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security bill (AgJOBS) was introduced in Congress. It has been periodically reviewed and debated—but it has not been enacted into law.

Maria works harvesting food for other people, yet struggles to provide food for her family. Learn more about the challenges Maria and her family face daily in the United States.