Key Takeaways
- A UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute study makes sweeping claims about Washington’s H-2A program from limited evidence, relying on just 43 interviews and 179 surveys.
- Federal law already requires H-2A employers to recruit and prioritize available U.S. workers before and during the employment period.
- Labor shortages, not simply H-2A hiring, are driving increased reliance on guest workers, as farmworkers become less migratory and regional worker shortages grow.
- Several of the UCLA study’s policy recommendations lack supporting evidence or face legal and practical problems, including expanded unionization and reliance on undocumented workers.
Introduction
An out-of-state researcher has concluded Washington state’s H-2A use is primarily due to exploitation of the federal program. In a study published earlier this year, the author’s findings lay out four stiff accusations of Washington’s agricultural employers:
- Growers use regulatory loopholes to treat the H-2A program as a default hiring mechanism rather than a last-resort labor program.
- State enforcement actions confirm that employer misuse of the H-2A program has enabled widespread gender discrimination against women workers and disproportionate displacement on Washington farms.
- Expanded use of the H-2A visa program has reduced employment opportunities for local immigrant farmworkers across the state.
- Loss of farm employment has triggered deep and compounding impacts for farmworker households and heightened immigration enforcement.
While the findings in the study are troubling, so, too, is the lack of evidence to support the findings in the paper published through the University of California at Los Angeles Latino Policy & Politics Institute Latina Futures 2050 Lab.
Manufacturing farmworker displacement: How local agricultural workers are displaced in Washington state draws a straight line between hiring farmworkers with an H-2A visa and the displacement of female farmworkers in the state. The report conveniently turns a blind eye to several key components of federal law, the promotion of unions and the hiring of undocumented workers. The study uses a mixed method approach – using surveys and interviews – with a deceptively small sample size to make generalized statements about all employers and farmworkers in our state and the H-2A program to support the author’s bias and a favored policy of farmworker unionization.
