❷American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years.❷The complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm workers.
❶Congress has obstructed efforts to create a more straightforward visa for agricultural workers that would let foreign workers stay longer in the U.S. and change jobs within the industry.❷If this doesn't change, American businesses, communities, and consumers will be the losers.
❶Perhaps half of U. S. farm laborers are undocumented immigrants.❷As fewer such workers enter the country, the characteristics of the agricultural workforce are changing. ❸Today's farm laborers, while still predominantly born in Mexico, are more likely to be settled rather than migrating and more likely to be married than single.❹They're also aging. ❺At the start of this century, about one-third of crop workers were over the age of 35.❻Now more than half are.❼And picking crops is hard on older bodies.❽One oft-debated cure for this labor shortage remains as implausible as it's been all along: Native U.S. workers won't be returning to the farm.
❶Mechanization isn't the answer, either—not yet, at least. ❷Production of com, cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat has been largely mechanized, but many high・value, labor-intensive crops, such as strawberries, need labor. ❷Even dairy farms, where robots do a small share of milking, have a long way to go before they're automated.
❶As a result, farms have grown increasingly reliant on temporary guest workers using the H-2A visa to fill the gaps in H-2A the workforce.❷Starting around 2012, requests for the visas rose sharply; from 2011 to 2016 the number of visas issued more than doubled.
❶The H-2A visa has no numerical cap, unlike the H-2B H-2A /visa for nonagricultural work, which is limited to 66,000 a year. ❷Even so, employers complain they aren't given all the workers they need.❸The process is cumbersome, expensive, and unreliable.❹One survey found that bureaucratic delays led the average H-2A worker to arrive on the job 22 days late.❺The shortage is compounded by federal immigration raids, which remove some workers and drive others underground. Oln a 2012 survey, 71 percent of tree-fruit growers and almost 80 percent of raisin and berry growers said they were short of labor.❷Some western farmers have responded by moving operations to Mexico.❸From 1998 to 2000, 14.5 percent of the fruit Americans consumed was imported.❹Little more than a decade later, the share of imports was 25.8 percent. Oln effect, the U. S. can import food or it can import the workers who pick it. I
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多年来，美国农场主一直在抱怨劳动力短 缺的问题。(31)如果不对农场工人的移民条 例进行彻底改革，这些抱怨就不大可能停止。 种种可以为农业工人创设一种更简 易签证的努力都遭到了美国国会的阻挠，该 签证允许外籍工人能够在美国停留更长时间 并能在本行业内更换工作。(31)如果这一 情况仍不改变，美国企业、社会各界和消费 者都将蒙受损失。 美国的农场工人中可能有一半都是无证移 民。随着来到美国的此类工人越来越少，美国 农业劳动力的特征也在不断发生变化。如今美 国的农业劳动者虽仍然主要出生于墨西哥，但 他们更有可能定居下来，而不是继续迁移；而 且也更有可能已婚而非单身。(32)他们也正 在老龄化。本世纪初,大约三分之_的农作物 工人年龄在35岁以上。而现在超过一半的农 作物工人年龄都在35岁以上。而且收割庄稼 对年老的人而言很困难。(33)针对这种劳动 力短缺问题，有一种经常被争论的解决方案一 直以来都让人觉得不合情理，因为美国本土工 人不会再回到农场了。 机械化也解决不了这一问题 —— 至少现 在还不能。玉米、棉花、水稻、大豆和小麦 的生产已经基本实现机械化，但很多高价值 的劳动密集型农作物，例如草莓，仍需要人 工劳动力参与生产。即使在奶牛养殖场，机 器人也只能承担一小部分的挤奶工作，在实 现自动化之前还有很漫长的道路要走。 因此，美国的农场越来越依赖那些使用 签证的临时外籍劳工来填补劳动力的缺 口。大约从2012年开始，申请此类签证的 人数急剧上升；从2011年到2016年，签证 的签发数量增加了一倍多。 签证签发量没有上限，不像H-2BJ, 非农业工作签证，它每年的签发量上限为6.6 万个。（34）即便如此，雇主们还是抱怨， 他们的劳工仍然不够。H・2A签证的申请流程 复杂烦琐、价格昂贵而且并不可靠。一项调 查发现，官僚主义的拖延导致使用H・2A签 证的普通劳工到岗时间延迟了 22天。联邦政 府对移民的突击检查使一些工人被迫离开， 还有一些被迫变成打黑工的“地下工作者”， 这也加剧了劳动力短缺。 在2012年的一项调查中，71%的果树种植 户和近80%的葡萄干和浆果种植户称他们缺少 劳动力。为应对这一问题，一些西部农场主已 经将生产转移到墨西哥。1998年到2000年， 美国人消费的水果中有14.5%是进口的。十多 年后，进口水果所占比例达到了 25.8%。 实际上，美国可以进口食品，也可以进 口采摘食品的劳工。