Labor Shortage for Harvest: Americans Still Won’t Stoop to Pick Produce

In the 1950s, the U.S. had a guest-worker policy that was more liberal in allowing temporary workers from Mexico to pick U.S. crops. Today, we have an H-2A visa that allows a foreign national entry into the U.S. for temporary or seasonal agricultural work. It has lots of red tape, aimed at protecting vulnerable migrants from exploitation. Well-meaning farms have problems getting workers under the USCIS program. Now, this story in today’s Wall Street Journal. An HR manager for a 35-acre produce farm in Arlington, Washington offered 20% raises to the most productive workers from the last harvest. She posted help-wanted ads on Craigslist, beside highways and on the bathroom-stall door at a church. She also successfully lobbied local high schools to broadcast her call for workers during morning announcements. She needs 100 workers … and found 60.  The article says: "More broadly, growers say they are bearing the brunt of the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration, as they lack a suitable alternative workforce. U.S.-born workers unaccustomed to farm labor abandon the job after just days during harvest, farm owners say, and the supply of mostly Mexican laborers that made up for them has shrunk in recent years." See here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-u-s-farms-fewer-hands-for-the-harvest-1439371802