Resources on the H-2A guestworker program
Thursday, 02 April 2009 15:29
FJ Summary of Rep. Smith's 'American Specialty Agriculture Act ' Sept. 2011
FJ statement for Rep. Smith’s hearing on the “American Specialty Agriculture Act” Sept. 2011
FJ Summary of Rep. Lungren's 'Legal Agricultural Workforce Act ' Sept. 2011
FJ Summary of Sen. Chambliss's 'HARVEST' Act October 2011
No Way to Treat a Guest: Why the H-2A Agricultural Visa Program Fails U.S. and Foreign Workers Sept. 2011
Weeding Out Abuses: Recommendations for a law- abiding farm labor system by Farmworker Justice and Oxfam America
Bruce Goldstein Written Testimony April 2011 before the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement Hearing on: “The H-2A Visa Program: Meeting the Growing Needs of American Agriculture?"
Bruce Goldstein Testimony Sept 2011 before Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Workforce Committee: Workforce Challenges Facing the Agriculture Industry
( H-2A program)
H-2A adverse effect wage rates:
Table of wage rates 2000-2011 (by state)
Union Contracts with H-2A Employers:
- The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) has a contract with the North Carolina Growers Association, providing significant improvements in wages and working conditions for some 6,000 workers.
Articles and Reports Discussing the H-2A program
Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 2007
"In Loneliness, Immigrants Tend the Flock", New York Times, February 21, 2009
New York Times article discussing the H-2A guestworker program, “Who Will Work the Farms?” by Eduardo Porter, March 23, 2006.
Leah Beth Ward, Thai Farm Workers Seek Equity in Strange Land, YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC, October 9, 2005.
Michael Blanding, "Invisible Harvest," Boston Magazine (October 2002).
Bland Farms of Georgia, which uses the H-2A guestworker program and is a major grower of sweet Vidalia onions, was successfully sued for discrimination against an African-American woman. An article in the Legal Service Corporation's Equal Justice Magazine (Fall 2002) "Discrimination on the Farm," by Daniel Cox, describes the case brought by Georgia Legal Services, and quotes FJ's Bruce Goldstein.
"Defending the Rights of H-2A Workers," North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation, Univ. of North Carolina School of Law, Vol. 27, No. 3, Spring 2002, a keynote speech given by the managing attorney of the farmworker unit of Legal Services of North Carolina, at the law journal's conference, "Work, Migration & Identity."
Cindy Hahamovitch, "In America Life is Given Away": Jamaican Farmworkers and the Making of Agricultural Immigration Policy, in THE COUNTRYSIDE IN THE AGE OF THE MODERN STATE: POLITICAL HISTORIES OF RURAL AMERICA, 134-160 (Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert Johnson, eds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
"In the Kingdom of Big Sugar
," by Marie Brenner in Vanity Fair Magazine, February 2001, not available online.
"Silence in the Fields," by Barry Yeoman, in Mother Jones Magazine (Jan.-Feb. 2001), a major investigation into the operation of the H-2A program in North Carolina, the single largest user of agricultural temporary foreign workers.
Human Rights Watch, in 2000, published a case study about the H-2A program in North Carolina as part of its major report, "Unfair Advantage: Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards".
"Desperate Harvest," by Leah Beth Ward, an October 1999 series of articles on migrant farmworkers in North Carolina by the Charlotte Observer, about the use of temporary foreign workers in North Carolina. The articles are available at the website of the agricultural resource center at the University of California.
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