The American Immigration Policy Center issued an excellent Fact Sheet about H2A farm orkers and the need for reform.
The Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits, and Security (AgJOBS) Act has long served as a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform. AgJOBS, which combines an earned legalization program for farmworkers with a reform of the H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program demonstrates a successful model for compromise where workers and employers have come together to resolve their differences. The dysfunctional U.S. immigration system is currently standing in the way of addressing deeper structural problems that impact U.S. workers and U.S. competitiveness in a globalized market. As Congress proceeds, here are a few facts about the current challenges at the intersection of immigration policy and agriculture, and why addressing these issues is critical to the nation’s economy.
Here is an interesting fact :Most farmworkers are not authorized to work legally in the U.S.
According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS), conducted biannually by the Department of Labor, the share of seasonal agricultural workers who reported that they were unauthorized has increased dramatically in the last two decades, rising from 7% in Fiscal Year (FY) 1989, to 16% in FY 1990-91, to 28% in FY 1992-93. In the most recently published NAWS survey from FY 2001-02, 53% of all seasonal agricultural workers admitted they were not authorized to work in the U.S. However, many experts suggest that the number may actually be closer to 75%.
Read the Fact-sheet here