TOPEKA — Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas criticized a plan by President Joe Biden’s administration to strengthen enforcement protocols and worker rights for those enrolled in a federal visa program that is increasingly used to fill labor shortages in American agriculture.
The Biden administration’s proposed reform, according to Marshall, a Republican member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, would make it more difficult and expensive for firms in the farming and ranching industries to use the H-2A visa program to hire foreign workers legally in Kansas.
Employers in the agriculture industry have long lamented the bureaucratic obstacles associated with the visa program. The goal of labor advocates has been to lessen wage theft and other types of exploitation. The majority of people who are granted H-2A visas enter the country from Mexico. When U.S. employers attest that they are unable to locate enough individuals domestically who are willing, qualified, and available to perform temporary farm work, they fill positions.
“This proposed rule by the Biden administration makes it difficult and costly for our ag businesses to keep and recruit H-2A visa holders at a time when our nation’s agriculture industry faces a severe labor crisis,” Marshall stated. “Our country’s immigration laws need to be significantly and constructively changed. We do not need more rules that penalize hardworking ranchers and farmers.
Federal officials announced on Monday that the proposed regulations, which are up for public comment until November 14th, would strengthen protections for agricultural workers by giving the agency the authority to monitor adherence to visa requirements and take enforcement action against those who do not comply.
The proposed regulations would require the release of additional data regarding people and companies that are in charge of hiring and managing foreign employees in the US. It would make it more illegal for recruiters or companies to charge fees to temporary employees who have been granted visas. The plan would update rules that have “been subject to misinterpretation” and increase the authority of the federal government’s wage-and-hour division.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security offered a set of suggested modifications to modify the H-2A temporary agriculture and H-2B temporary nonagricultural labor programs.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, stated that “these proposed reforms will help U.S. employers address worker shortages through new program flexibilities.” “They will also assist in giving this susceptible group of workers the protections they are entitled to.”