Obama Administration Announces Proposal to Suspend Bush Guestworker Rules
Sunday, 03 May 2009 00:00
Immigration Labor - H-2A Changes
The Obama Administration has announced a proposal to temporarily suspend the Bush regulations for a period of nine months!
The proposal was published in the Federal Register today (March 17th) [Federal Register Notice
] and provided for a ten-day public comment period, which ended on Friday, March 27, 2009. DOL is now reviewing the comments and will issue a decision on the suspension.
The H-2A agricultural guestworker program is supposed to ensure that U.S. workers are offered decent wages and working conditions before employers are permitted to hire foreign guestworkers based on claimed labor shortages, but the Bush Administration's changes gave agricultural employers access to cheap foreign labor with little government oversight. The new proposal would restore the guarantee that US workers will be hired before foreign workers; a protection that was weakened under the Bush regulations.
The new proposal would also restore the wage system used under the previous regulations which will overcome wage cuts that US and foreign workers experienced during 2009 due to the Bush Administration's changes; many workers lost about $2.00 per hour under the Bush rules. H-2A workers in North Carolina, for example, earned $8.85/hr last year under the old regulations. This year under the Bush rules, they are getting only $7.25/hr. Under the wage rate calculation of the previous rules, these workers would be earning $9.34/hr this year.
Some changes that were made under the Bush Administration that were helpful will be retained. For example, the farm labor contractors who bring in H-2A workers will have to post a bond so that when wage violations occur, the workers will have money to recover.
In addition, some improvements over the old rules have occurred that were long needed. For example, the job offers that employers must submit to prove they are recruiting US workers will now be posted online so that US workers and their advocates can learn about them in a timely way.
The proposal is the latest attempt to reverse the Bush Administration's changes to the program which were finalized in December of last year.
We hope that DOL will be able to review all of the comments promptly and that it will reach a decision to suspend the Bush H-2A regulations effective immediately. Read our statement regarding the proposal 
.
- Read a more detailed set of comments submitted by Farmworker Justice and other organizations
(03/27/09)
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