Texas Lawmaker Proposes Beefing Up Temporary Worker Program to Ease Farm Labor Shortages
All H-2A workers would have to be paid a wage that matches the minimum wage of the state they’re employed in, plus $2 per hour.
Laramie Adams, government affairs director for the Texas Farm Bureau, said he supported a more streamlined application, saying the current process of matching up with H-2A workers is cumbersome.
Employers have to submit paper applications and supporting documents. If a state or federal agency requires more information from an employer, the agencies often mail their requests rather than sending an email, leading to a lengthy back-and-forth, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
And employers who need workers at different parts of a season must go through the entire process again.
“The main thing that we advocate for is a strong, legal agriculture workforce, and it’s been hard to navigate the current H-2A process to ensure that we have a reliable workforce,” Adams said. “At the same time, we have a lot more Texans who are using the program because it’s their only avenue to be able to get seasonal agricultural workers.”
The bill is named after a temporary labor program between the U.S. and Mexico that ran from 1942 until 1964. The Bracero program — meaning “arm man” or manual laborer in Spanish — was meant to provide a legal way to temporarily hire Mexican migrant farmworkers along the southern border.
“For decades, the Bracero Program created new opportunities for millions and provided critical support for Texas agriculture,” De La Cruz said in a statement.
The program ended because of tensions with the farm labor unions, which accused agriculture employers of using bracero workers as cheap labor that put U.S. workers at a disadvantage, according to Mayra Avila, a lecturer at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
She said labor shortages in the agriculture sector have existed for years, but recent immigration arrests targeting immigrant farmworkers have magnified the need for labor.
But Avila questioned whether changes like those proposed in De La Cruz’s bill would address the shortages, noting that the undocumented workers being arrested are not eligible for H-2A visas.
“You have to have a clean record,” Avila said.
Lawmakers have repeatedly tried to reform the H-2A program over the years, including one attempt in 2021 that would have created a path to legal status for undocumented farmworkers. De La Cruz’s bill contains no such provision.
Though it’s unclear whether De La Cruz’s bill will garner strong support, the legislation signals a desire among Republicans to establish a framework to allow more migrant farmworkers to work in the country legally.
“The reality is that you’re getting rid of a lot of farmworker laborers, and farm work is very hard work,” Avila said.
She said the U.S. relies too heavily on farmworkers and that it would be difficult to fill those jobs with U.S. citizens.
“As a U.S. citizen, you would rather get a job at McDonald’s with air conditioning, or a Walmart with air conditioning, than go work in the fields where, in Texas, it’s 90 degrees,” she said. “Why would you do this to yourself? It’s back-breaking.”
Berenice Garcia is a regional reporter for the Texcovering the Rio Grande Valley. This story is published courtesy of the Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
