Farm Workforce Modernization Act (FWMA)

A bipartisan effort has developed to help agribusiness and farmers of the United States. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act (FWMA) introduced in October 2019, H.R. 5038 received 260 votes to pass in Congress (including 34 Republicans. This bill if passed by the Senate would help undocumented farmworkers gain legal status while remaining in the U.S. labor force.

H.R. 5038 was many years in the making. The bill would update regulations for temporary workers, promise fair wages, and farmworker housing.

To be eligible you have to:

• Provide proof of 180 days of agricultural employment over the last two years
• Pass a background check
• Qualified applicants will be provided with a 5-year renewable agricultural work visa by continuing to work in agriculture each year.
• Pay $1,000 fine to gain an opportunity to earn Lawful Permanent Resident status.
• You must be a “Certified Agricultural Worker (CAW) – meeting a requirement of having worked in the United States for at least 10 years and work at least four more years in agriculture on CAW status before they can apply. If you worked fewer than 10 years in agriculture, you must work at least eight more years in agriculture on CAW status before you can apply. For this, there would be an additional 40,000 green cards per year for agricultural workers.

The FWMA would also improve the H-2A visa program to work in all of agriculture. The growers would streamline the access to a legal source of labor when they needed it, making the process of obtaining farmworkers much easier.

Employers would also be protected from sudden wage increases that disrupt employer planning and operations. The FWMA would also reduce housing costs to the employers while benefiting from $1 billion to rehabilitate housing that is aging out of USDA incentive programs. Other housing incentives will be offered to growers as well.

An additional requirement of the FWMA would establish a mandatory, nationwide E-Verify system for all agricultural employment.

More political manipulation: More lies, more hypocrisy, more political conveniences, more subsidies to agricultural business interests.

Two things to take into consideration: One, temporary foreign workers are also available to any employer. There are recruitment efforts around the world to fill these labor needs, not just for agriculture. In 2013, the U.S. had 1,423,894 temporary foreign workers. The employer is exempt from paying into social security for these guest workers.

Secondly, there are reports of U.S. farmland being bought by foreign investors. Thirty million acres in California, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina and Indiana.

The Trump administration had been discussing trade and tariffs with other major countries, though it has hurt American agriculture by its proposals. Now Trump has pledged to ensure a steady labor force with H.R. 5038 It’s not because he has had a change of heart in regard to undocumented workers, but because he wants to regain farmers’ support.

At this time, many Democrats and some Republicans are supporting this legislation along with the UFW, Western Growers Association, California Citrus Mutual, Farmworker Justice, and UFW Foundation among others. The fact that there would be a possibility of legalizing farmworkers and their families smells of “amnesty” to some politicians and they probably will not support passing it in the Senate.

The real question remains: Why not provide legislation that will benefit the 11 million people who are also living in fear of deportation? ICE really doesn’t care if who they deport are farmworkers, but agribusiness and farmers do, because this destabilizes the agricultural and farmers’ needs.

(Note: This is not yet law. The Senate has to take it up and then signed by the President.)