Another year has come and gone without farm labor reforms, and a longtime Senator explains why.
Iowa Senator and farmer Chuck Grassley is as frustrated as any over Congress’ decades’ long failure to reform the H-2A guest worker program.
“It makes common sense that agriculture needs workers year-round, not seasonal workers, particularly if you’re in animal agriculture, as one example.”
More than 350 food, farm, and farmworker groups came together on a 2022 bill sponsored by Colorado Democrat Michael Bennett.
“Increases the number of H-2A visas and opens the program up to year-round jobs for the first time ever. It creates wage certainty for farmers to protect them from harmful swings in labor costs.”
And Bennett claims it would have saved farmers $23 billion over 12 years, or $2 billion more than a House-passed version.
But it was not to be in the Senate, where, three years later, Grassley says the same issues still stand in the way.
“There are people on the right who aren’t going to vote for anything, unless you get 12 million people illegally in our country out of the country, and that isn’t feasible. And then, there are people on the left who won’t vote for anything that you don’t make people citizens, yesterday.”
The earlier bill tried to strike a compromise by creating a temporary, renewable legal status for farm workers already here, with an option to earn permanent legal status.