Agriculture rules in Quincy, Washington. Sprawling apple, cherry and peach orchards surround this rural city of about 8,000. Packing sheds dot the middle of downtown. Railroad tracks run close to the Columbia River, so produce can make its way to market by both train and waterway.
Farm workers such as Alberto, who is only using his first name for privacy reasons, are the backbone of the industry. Once a migrant farm worker traveling around California and Washington state for jobs, he now lives permanently in Quincy with his family. There, he’s found steady year-round work planting, tending and harvesting crops at various farms. With that more stable work, he and other domestic farm workers have built a tight community in Grant county.
But Alberto worries that work in this fertile area will soon dry up for workers like him. US-based farms and growers are increasingly looking to hire H-2A workers, foreign agricultural laborers allowed to temporarily work in the country under federal law enacted in the late 1980s.
The program, administered by the Department of Labor, has been steadily growing and was buoyed by the Trump administration’s pandemic designation of farm workers as essential workers. Advocates say that some growers are turning to H-2A labor first, squeezing domestic workers out. Now the president-elect has signaled that mass deportations are on the table for his second term. That could decimate the ranks of the undocumented workers who form the majority of the farming workforce and sustain US agriculture. It could also boost the H-2A program and further displace workers like Alberto.
Until April, Alberto worked for a large farm that grows daffodils, tulips and other flowers. In previous years, he used to work long hours and up to seven days each week. This year, he and other workers started getting fewer hours and sometimes had multiple days off each week.
Alberto explained through a translator that his bosses began complaining that local workers were taking too much time off to handle family commitments – something that H-2A workers, often men who leave their families for US fields and wages, might do less frequently. Then, one day, Alberto drove past the farm and saw workers he didn’t recognize doing the work he and others would typically do. Later, after a long shift, the company announced to all the farm workers that this would be their last day of the season. But instead of closing up shop, the grower continued business as usual – this time with H-2A workers.
Alejandro Gutierrez-Li, a North Carolina State University economist whose work focuses on immigration and agricultural labor in the US, said: “In [the program’s] early years, H-2A workers were primarily found on the east coast (particularly North Carolina and Florida), but with the decline in the farm labor supply, its use has become more widespread throughout the country.” The farm work force is changing: it’s ageing, fewer US workers are willing to take agricultural jobs; and crackdowns on undocumented laborers have periodically disrupted the flow of workers.
Employers have to get approval to host workers. To be certified, they must prove they tried and failed to recruit enough workers. Critics say that farms can easily circumvent the process by placing job ads online or other places where farm workers, who mostly find jobs through their word of mouth, are unlikely to see them. Then, the prospective employer can demonstrate that no locals were available to work and apply for foreign workers.
Alfredo Juarez is a farm worker and campaign director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), an independent labor union of 400 farm workers in Washington state. He argues that the steady growth of the H-2A program is starting to crowd out domestic workers for more easily exploited guest workers. H-2A workers have traditionally not been allowed to organize – though a Biden-administration rule tried unsuccessfully to change that this summer. And that lack of rights puts them at the mercy of abusive employers and changes working conditions for all.
The number of H-2A workers is trending upward in Grant county and Washington state. In 2023, Grant county had 761 certified H-2A guest workers. While the Department of Labor (DoL) has only released data up to June of this year, the number of certified H-2A workers in Grant county increased to 1,965. And according to DOL data, the number of certified H-2A workers hired in Washington state was 15,123 in 2014. This year, the DoL certified 30,664 workers, which means the program more than doubled over the past decade. Washington state now hosts almost as many foreign agricultural workers as the much-bigger California to its south does.
The H-2A program will probably continue growing there and nationwide despite its high cost for farms and growers. It can cost an employer about $15,000 or more per worker each season, which includes housing, transportation and food. But many growers are willing to pay those costs in exchange for a steady supply of farmhands who are less likely to leave because their visas depend on their jobs. “Growers are generally satisfied with the workers they get and their work ethic,” said Gutierrez-Li.
Rosa Navarro, a sociology doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, researches the guest worker program’s expansion in Washington state. Farm workers have told her that some farms replaced their entire workforce with guest workers, and advocates say that the H-2A program is making inroads with agricultural sites that haven’t used its workers before.
One such farm is Enfield Farms, a raspberry and blueberry farm based in Whatcom county, Washington. Last year was its first applying for foreign guest workers. In May this year, Enfield applied for 96 H-2A workers – the exact number it needed for harvesting.
When Community to Community (C2C), a women of color-led food justice grassroots organization, learned that Enfield applied to the DoL for these workers, the organization spread the word about the openings and assisted local farm workers in applying. In the end, Enfield hired 93 H-2A workers, an Enfield Farms representative, Marcus Schumacher, confirmed through email. He said that 88% of the farm’s total workforce, including but not limited to harvesters, were locals. The portion of guest workers that the farm employs is due to the “difficulty finding the workforce [needed] to complete harvest”.
Right now, C2C is preparing to launch a campaign to raise awareness about H-2A in smaller farm worker communities that may be the next places at risk for job loss and displacement. “In many of these areas, people have never heard of the H-2A program, and then all of a sudden, [local] workers are in trouble,” said Rosalinda Guillen, C2C’s executive director.
Since its formation in 1980, C2C has opposed guest worker visa programs. The grassroots organization believes these programs harm local farm worker communities and economies.
“Our biggest opposition campaign [to H-2A] started in 2017, when one worker died in Whatcom county because of the exploitation and mismanagement of the H-2A program,” said Guillen. Since then, the organization has argued the guest worker visa program disregards both the rights of foreign and domestic farm workers.
“The farm workers that are already in the state lose earning power, they lose jobs, and then it becomes the norm for the workforce to be H-2A only,” said Guillen. She also noted that there seems to be a “sales force” in Whatcom and Skagit counties, promoting H-2A labor to small farms that have historically employed local workers.
That expansion requires new forms of outreach. Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) is an unusual example of inclusive farm worker organizing. As FUJ’s campaign director, Alfredo Juarez explains that the organization educates farm workers, from pickers to machine operators, on their rights and hiring processes in the state. Its membership includes both local farm workers and H-2A workers.
Juarez points out that domestic and guest farm workers have a common cause. For example, increased productivity quotas around Quincy have in effect shrunken pay. And while the workers’ status may differ, local farm workers and H-2A guest workers work side by side. So, to Juarez’s mind, they should build coalitions together too.
Alberto, who secured another job harvesting blueberries, echoed that sentiment. “We are not against the [H-2A] workers, but the system that pits us against each other.” But he still asked: “What happens to the people who have been working and supporting this industry for so many years?”
This story was produced with support from the Environmental and Epistemic Justice Initiative at Wake Forest University
