Rule No. 1 in immigration law is that nothing is simple. If one form would be enough, then by all means require two or three. If a single bureaucracy could handle oversight, be sure to get several involved.
You’d think, for example, that a 60-year-old federal program to allow seasonal farm workers into the country would be a model of efficiency. But to the contrary, it’s become a paperwork nightmare for those who use it, as outlined in
Her report highlighted the travails of Colorado farmer John Harold, who found himself in the news last year when he tried to hire locals to fill some of the positions that in the past had gone to foreign laborers. “It didn’t take me six hours to realize I’d made a heck of a mistake,” Harold told The New York Times — six hours, that is, before some of the locals realized they weren’t cut out for difficult field work, and quit.
But applying for seasonal workers under the H-2A visa program is no piece of cake, either, Harold complains, given how agencies from the Department of Labor to Homeland Security have a say in administering it. In wading through the lengthy paperwork, Harold “checked a single box wrong on the H2-A form,” Lofholm reported. “It was returned to him less than a month before he is due to begin planting.”
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet has joined five other senators in asking the secretary of labor to look into growing delays in processing H-2A visa requests, and we hope the agency responds. But we’d also hope that Congress would take a serious look at one of several bills that would reform the visa program so that it’s responsive to the needs of employers, workers and consumers.
We’re not talking about comprehensive immigration reform. As much as this country could benefit from such wholesale reform, the reality is that it can’t happen given present-day politics. But surely Democrats and Republicans alike can agree that America’s farmers need to harvest crops and that domestic workers aren’t always available or willing to do the job. As it happens, Republicans such as Reps. Daniel Lundgren of California and Christopher Smith of New Jersey are actually leading the effort to reform the H-2A program.
Bennet and his colleagues are hardly alone in suggesting the Department of Labor is falling down on the job. But the history of the H-2A program suggests that their intervention, however successful in the short run, won’t permanently change how the program is administered.
“The H-2A program is not currently a reliable mechanism to meet labor needs in situations where domestic workers are not available,” a former chief of the H-2 certification unit told Congress — in 1997.
It still isn’t. In fact, it’s worse. And fixing the law should be a no-brainer for Congress — except for Rule No. 1.
