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This week on the farm, Old Mission Peninsula farmers are trimming their orchards and vineyards, working on paperwork, and getting up to speed on new pesticide regulations and H-2A Visa Program initiatives.
The H-2A Visa Program allows farmers to bring foreign workers to the United States to perform temporary or seasonal agricultural work, including planting, cultivating and harvesting crops. Many times over the past few months, I’ve heard the phrase, “Who will pick our crops if undocumented immigrants are sent back to their home countries?”
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While I’m sure there may be some of those folks working on farms throughout the United States, in the case of Old Mission Peninsula farmers, this farm help is done by people — generally from Mexico — who are here legally through the H-2A Visa Program. It’s a very regulated and complex program which, in the case of my farmer brothers, Dean Johnson and Ward Johnson, is handled by an H-2A specialist at the local Farm Bureau office.
Farmers must follow specific rules for this program, and can face fines if anything is amiss. It’s also expensive, as the farmers must pay to transport the workers to the United States and back to their home country, pay to house them, pay specific wages and more. Here’s a partial list of costs…
You might ask why farmers don’t hire local help to work on the farm. The short answer is, it’s very difficult to find locals willing to do the hard work involved with farming. Back in the 1960s and previous decades, thousands of migrants crowded onto the Peninsula to work on the farms. There was even a Mexican Drive-In Theater at Bowers Harbor that Tim wrote about here.
When cherry shakers came along, the crew consisted mainly of family members, kids’ friends, boyfriends, girlfriends and so on. If you were a friend of any of the Johnson kids back then — or *any OMP farmers’ kids — chances are good that you worked on the cherry shakers at one time or another.
Then the kids grew up and moved on to other things, and that’s when Mexican workers arrived back on the scene. Most OMP farmers could not run their farms without them, and the H-2A Visa Program is a tremendous help in that regard.
Read more about the program here.
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As an addition to the above, the current minimum wage that sponsors are required to pay H2A workers is $18.15 per hour, plus cover all of the expenses above.
If you are a small grower who hires an ag management company with H2A workers, you will be charged close to $30/hour per worker.
https://flag.dol.gov/wage-data/adverse-effect-wage-rates
The employers are required, obviously, to have recruited Americans….
And post a job listing like this, at local areas where labor meets and there is high surplus, underemployed people.
https://seasonaljobs.dol.gov/jobs/H-300-23157-081895
I searched US DOL approved farms and could not find a job listing for OLD MISSION PENINSULA FARMS.
Are they hiring, or just preferring to bring in Mexican labor. If it is a case of discrimination this is unlawful and I hope your journalism was not deliberately concealing the name of an employer with a Federally declared Emergency Need for Labor..
I am extremely dishonored as an American by your comment “Americans don’t want to work hard” and I will be seeking a public apology. I understand the employer may have said this to support allegedly unlawful hiring, however, you stated as a journalist as fact an on behalf of the US Farming community and Michigan, I will be sending this to your state AG and Labor Board for defamation..
Anyone interested in work, they offer housing for free and paid travel. Please call ILA at 541-787-5904.
Spoken like someone who has not farmed and is not a farmer. If you can find an American worker that will work 80 hours a week during harvest season in fluctuating weather conditions, is dependable and reliable and also has the SKILL (because caring for and harvesting crops is most definitely a skill) to harvest crops without damaging the product….a farmer would hire them on the spot. And most HAVE hired them on the spot. The fact of the matter is that most Americans won’t perform these duties.
I am a labor advocate, and the truth of the matter is, they have to recruit and retain and make a true effort to hire Americans and work with local unions, temp agencies, or any other reasonable source to hire Americans.
I will contact this farm and see if they are discriminating against Americans..
Also, thank you for letting us know the non profit Farm Bureau is under sitting us farm labor and small farms by assisting in immigration proceedings without actively trying to help find Americans to work.
Farms are not discriminating against Americans. Come on over to Michigan and we’ll put you to work. You will get paid $18.15 an hour (because there’s prevailing wage for H2A workers) and have free housing and transportation. I realize in Oregon that $18.15 an hour sounds like a pittance but to Michigan farmers, that’s a pretty big chunk of change to pay the 40-100 workers it takes (even on the “small farms” you claim are being undercut )to harvest a crop. I believe in Oregon prevailing wage is $19.82 per hour–go but a farm and pay all your American workers that prevailing wage. Tell us how many applicants from American workers there are.
Thank you for this discussion, All.
Rachel – You are correct in that part of the H-2A process is seeking out workers from the United States first. And thank you for your work in advocating for farm workers. Do you have a website where we can learn more about your group?