North Carolina has a billion-dollar agricultural industry in part because of a historical reliance on tens of thousands of migrant workers, mostly from Mexico, who are willing to come work here annually through seasonal visas from the U.S. Department of Labor.
The state's tobacco, sweet potato, watermelon, and blueberry farms survive year after year thanks to the roughly 15,000 foreign laborers — not including thousands of undocumented workers — who come to the U.S. with visas through H-2A seasonal guestworker program.
A new report from the John Locke Foundation, a pro-free market think tank based in Raleigh, argues the program is "costly, bureaucratic and restrictive" and must be reformed to be more sustainable and address labor shortages in the long term.
The report, titled "Harvest on Hold," argues for labor and immigration reform to ensure the H-2A program's sustainability.
"(Mexican) agriculture has decreased, the service sector has increased," said Kelly Lester, the report's author. "There's less of a reason to come to America now. You have Trump in office, who doesn't want them here to begin with. And that's altogether, creating less immigration into the state and less interest in programs like the H-2A visa."
H-2A workers and the strenuous conditions they work under, including extreme heat, were the subject of Scorched Workers, a recent WUNC special project.
What the report says
- Farm labor is unattractive for Americans: less than one percent of Americans make their living in agriculture and are more attracted to less physically demanding jobs with higher pay and benefits. In 2020, nearly half of U.S. farms reported labor shortages.
- A shift to less labor-intensive crops, like soybeans, to rely less on the H-2A program has led to economic losses for farmers.
- Immigration from Mexico has reduced due to improved economic opportunities in Mexico, declining birth rates, and increasingly strict U.S. immigration enforcement in the last decade.
- Although North Carolina is one of the largest users of the H-2A visa program, certifying over 25,000 H-2A workers annually, not all positions are filled. Farmers say there aren't sufficient workers to meet the demand.
- The H-2A program is administratively burdensome and expensive, which can restrict smaller family farms from participating and reduce the number of workers hired. Farmers must cover the costs of housing, transportation, and visa processing fees.
- Workplace abuses against workers and substandard housing are well-documented, harming the credibility of the program.
What the report proposes
- The government should establish a pathway to citizenship for H-2A workers. That could be a strong incentive to attract more Mexican laborers, ensure long-term job security and engagement in agriculture.
- Better enforcing workplace protections to reduce instances of workplace abuses to enhance the credibility of the program.
"Farmers need to have an incentive to want to provide better standards for their farmers and that's just through competition," said Lester. "When they themselves are having to compete for reputation in order to get the farm labor that they need, encouraging them to provide better standards for their workers, or maybe giving them PTO here and there." - Encouraging more domestic American participation in agriculture by requiring the integration of agricultural education into K–12 programs, and expanding Future Farmers of America and 4-H participation in private and charter schools.
- Reducing the financial burdens on employers to increase H-2A program participation by subsidizing housing and transportation costs for employers; providing tax incentives for businesses that hire H-2A workers; and streamlining the application process to minimize legal and administrative costs.
- Reforming the way workers are paid by decentralizing the wage rate system. The report argues it should be more localized instead of regional to more accurately and fairly govern how much states should pay H-2A workers. Additionally, the report argues that it should be reviewed periodically and frozen temporarily to stabilize employer costs.
