Migrant Workers’ Vital Role in Agriculture: A Conversation with Alejandro Gutiérrez-Li

Introduction

Workforce shortages have become a growing issue in almost every sector of the U.S. economy during recent years: agriculture, construction, hospitality, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, food services, and landscaping. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States was beginning to experience labor shortages — largely due to an aging workforce, a decrease in national fertility rates, and a decline in immigration rates since 2017. More recently, massive retirements and decreased migration — brought about by the pandemic and changes in the immigration system, as well as the accelerated economic recovery after the public health emergency was declared over — have only exacerbated these trends.

Background

Among these factors, migration deserves separate analysis: The United States has always relied on an important percentage of workers arriving from other countries. However, net international migration — the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants — slowed before the coronavirus pandemic, mainly due to the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies. Net migration peaked in 2016 and then declined each year through 2021. This reduction in immigrants is a key factor for the increased U.S. labor shortages since 2018.

Sectors such as agriculture that rely more on a migrant workforce are, of course, the most affected by lower net migration rates and declines in visa issuances. Immigrants have taken these jobs since U.S. workers prefer not to, given the arduous working conditions. The agricultural industry now has a chronic labor shortage and only increased migration can alleviate it. Unfortunately, Congress has been unwilling to legislate to meet this need.

While in recent years the U.S. government has increased the number of H-2A and TN visas issued to help agriculture, these are limited and cumbersome visa categories, and many more workers are needed than these visa paths can provide. 

Overview

This policy brief is based on a conversation with Alejandro Gutiérrez-Li, assistant professor at North Carolina State University, who was a special guest at the Baker Institute Migration Initiative’s “Conversations on Immigration” event on Oct. 17, 2023. Gutiérrez-Li, a labor economist, noted the importance of foreign-born workers in the agricultural sector and the need for more workers to ease the labor shortage. 

Key points from the conversation:

1. The U.S. agricultural sector relies primarily on immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented.
2. Labor shortages in this sector are likely to persist and may worsen.
3. H-2A visa issuances will continue to grow due to this labor shortage, but this visa is insufficient to fill the labor gap in the agricultural industry.
4. Mechanization could help, but not soon enough: It is currently at an experimental stage and cost prohibitive.
5. Despite their significant contribution to the food supply chain, immigrant farmworkers are generally invisible to the average U.S. consumer, but it is important to place them in the public eye and provide better working conditions and a path to legal status.

The following sections provide background to these key points, explain the issues, and recommends ways to modernize the immigration system to meet the need for more agricultural workers. They also discuss the related concerns of establishing a path to citizenship for long-term undocumented agricultural workers and providing better labor conditions.

US Agricultural Workforce

The United States’ agricultural sector depends almost entirely on foreign-born workers. To illustrate the problem: In 2011, an attempt to employ 6,500 farm workers was made in North Carolina — only a small number of Americans applied, fewer showed up for work and, of those, only seven worked through the full harvest season.

The United States is not alone: Many other developed countries rely on foreign workers to harvest crops. In Europe, for example, farmworkers are mainly immigrants. For those born in developed countries, agriculture is not generally viewed as a career — it is seen more as an occupation of last resort, only taken by foreign workers.

Acute Labor Shortage

A diminished work force and the resulting acute lack of labor has affected U.S. farms engaged in food production for some time. This labor shortage has led to farmersnot finding enough workers to harvest their crops and leaving fruits and vegetables to rot in fields all over the country. The decreased supply of produce has also led to price increases for the final consumer.

In view of the labor crisis, there have been some moves to import more food from elsewhere, including Asian countries. However, this exposes the American food supply to the uncertainties of global geopolitics, which may potentially impact imports.

Immigrant Workers

These issues in U.S. agriculture are not new. In 1942, the U.S. and Mexican governments established the Bracero program, which — until it ended in 1964 —permitted millions of Mexicans to take temporary agricultural work in the U.S. Since then, the vast majority of workers coming to the U.S. still continue to be Mexican and many are undocumented. The H2-A visa is now a de facto Bracero program, with nearly 300,000 workers in this category in 2022 alone.

Compounding the labor shortage, the U.S. government has increased border enforcement, effectively limiting the number of undocumented agricultural workers available. Moreover, there is increasing internal enforcement that has limited the mobility of undocumented agricultural workers within the country. 

H-2A Visa Program

After the Bracero program ended, the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers program took over. Its purpose was to mitigate the labor shortage in this industry, but it has never been enough, as evidenced by the heavy reliance on undocumented migrants. The program helps farmers by providing foreign agricultural workers legally for a temporary period (up to ten months in a year), but farming needs a more stable and mobile workforce than the H-2A visa can provide. 

The bulk of H-2A workers (around 90%) are from Mexico. H-2A visa numbers are not capped, but in contrast, the H-2B visa — which allows employers in the U.S. to hire nonagricultural immigrant workers for a temporary period, and covers work such as landscaping — does have a cap. 

Of over 180 different types of visas, the only visa that experienced continuous growth during the pandemic was the H-2A. In April 2020, the U.S. government declared farm workers essential, highlighting the great need for these normally unseen workers. Since then, the H-2A visa program has continued to grow. In fiscal year 2022, the government issued almost 300,000 H-2A visas, compared to around 65,000 in 2012. Southern states are among the top 10 states with more H-2A visas in 2022; Florida and California top the list, with Texas in ninth place.

However, the H-2A visa process is complex and expensive. To bring an H-2A worker to the U.S., farmers must:

• Advertise the position.
• Demonstrate that they tried to hire American workers and could not find them.
• Provide all stipulated paperwork.
• Pay all required fees.

Because of this, many farmers prefer to obtain workers by hiring contractors, who also charge fees for their services. Either way, it is a very expensive process for farm producers who require workers for their daily production. 

Automation in Agriculture

Some see automation and mechanization as a solution for the labor shortage, but automating agricultural production processes is also expensive, with a lengthy implementation period. Agricultural robots are in the initial development stages only and once viable robots have been designed, an additional hurdle will be making them affordable to farmers. Although in Europe some prototypes are being evaluated and robotic farming is being tested in California, in the near and medium future, this sector will still depend mainly on human beings.

Legislation Attempts

In 2021, the Farm Workforce Modernization Bill (HR 1603) proposed a program for certified agricultural workers and their families in the U.S. to earn legal status. This bill sought to deal with some of the limitations of the H-2A visa — for example, it is currently a seasonal program, and only allows employment for a maximum of 10 months, which does not help in areas, such as dairy farms, where workers are needed every day.

After being passed in the House of Representatives, HR 1603 stalled in the Senate. Similar legislation has been introduced to Congress many times before, most recently in 2023. However, these legislative attempts have all failed, despite the existence of bipartisan support due to the importance of national food security. 

One failure occurred because farm owners opposed a provision that would allow workers to file lawsuits against employers for violation of their rights. Given that undocumented workers are unlikely to say anything for fear of deportation — while H-2A workers risk being fired for reporting abusive behavior by their employer — labor abuse is a serious concern.

Policy Recommendations

In recent years, we have seen labor shortages in all sectors throughout the U.S. economy. The shortages in agriculture, however, were not caused by the COVID-19 pandemic — they have existed for many decades and are likely to persist and might possibly worsen in the future. While mechanization in the agricultural sector can help in the future, it is not a short-term option. This is why the sector relies heavily on undocumented workers and there has been a sharp increase in the number of H-2A visa workers, who come mainly from Mexico. 

The need for reform grows increasingly pressing as the likelihood of more extreme weather events in the future will make it harder to recruit workers. To alleviate and address labor shortages in this key sector of the U.S. economy, we recommend:

• Increasing legal immigration paths. 
• Legalizing the existing undocumented agricultural workers. 
• Bringing more foreign-born workers into agriculture. 
• Improving working conditions. 

On this last point, to ensure just and fair conditions for the workers it is important to have: 

• Bilingual support groups that can interact with the farmworkers and be their voice — as they did during the pandemic, when it became known that workers did not have access to personal protective equipment (PPE). 
• Certification of good labor practices for employers and the products they put on the market — for example, confirming that the certified product was brought to the market by a farmer paying adequate wages, under healthy and fair working conditions. 

Acting now to support these essential workers is vital to sustaining the nation’s food supply chain into the future. Everyone wins when workers are well and their needs are met. 

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s), and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.