Tell your Smart Speaker play cspan radio. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. Full funding provided by these Television Companies and more. Including midco. Midco. Supports cspan as a Public Service along with these other Television Providers giving you a frontrow seat to democracy. Joined and advocates to give testimony on the role of Migrant Workers in u. S. Farming and food production. This meeting will come to order. Last week the members of the committee traveled home for memorial day. It was an opportunity to learn more about constituent concerns. Everywhere i traveled i heard the same thing. I am sure other members did as well. Our nation is in need of legal workers. We have roughly 10 million unfilled jobs in this country and too few workers to fill them. The shortages hurting every industry and every community. I visited dictator, illinois. I have never heard this before. They have too many Job Vacancies , they are desperate for workers. I do not think i have ever heard that. One sector where worker shortage is dire is agriculture, an industry that relies heavily upon immigrants. Our broken immigration system makes it difficult to recruit workers to create affordability of our food supply. Go to the Grocery Store if you have not recently. Let them tell you the story of when things used to cost a few months ago and what the cost today. Part of the problem is the supply chain itself and the people who are an integral part of it. We start this morning by looking at a video on the essential dangers of the ultimate invisible work that farmworkers produce every day and how our immigration system is filling them. Lets show the video. [video clip] firm laborers are so critical farm laborers are so critical to our daily life. They are picking the food on your dinner table. More than half of the farm jobs are going unfilled. They do not have workers. We have been in a Workforce Shortage for a number of years. Undocumented workers are the backbone. Chair Durbin Congress has failed to modernize the immigration system. As a result, our nations farms have struggled to retain a steady supply of workers. I worked with my friends to advance bipartisan legislation, but we have never secured enough votes to support the enactment of the law. That is not just bad for the economy, it is a National Security risk. Our shortage of farmworkers has forced us to rely on other countries. The u. S. Department of agriculture g has projected that america will soon become a net importer of agricultural products. Immigration reform is a top priority. Both strengthening our borders is a crucial component it is only one part of the equation. We need to approach the issue as an economic imperative. Immigration reform is the most meaningful steps we can take to resolve our shortage of workers. These issues are fundamentally interconnected. We need immigrants. Immigration reform would help reduce unauthorized immigration by legalizing this Labor Migration but it seems that some in states like arkansas would prefer to address the shortage by rolling back the child labor laws. This is not a solution. This is a shame. Immigrants already account for more than 60 of all farmworkers in our country. Most of them are undocumented. What would happen to americas farmer if we deported these workers . Let me tell you about a farmer. She testified two years ago during the last hearing. They shared that his firm lost an entire season of profit because 36 h2a workers were delayed at the border. He is one of the millions of American Farmers and Business Owners who understand our economy depends on the labor of immigrants. Reducing the wages of legal immigrant farm workers or forcing undocumented out of the workforce is not a solution. Lawmakers must enact new laws to protect the rights of these workers while providing them with the path to permanent legal status. This will ensure farmworkers will continue to contribute to our nation. I want to introduce my noteworthy colleague, senator graham. Senator graham thank you. I am glad to be home. I want to thank senator blumenthal for representing me in russia. About my trip. This committee has been bipartisan in many ways. Senator durbin, you have been terrific. In the coming days, there will be a massive counteroffensive that will begin to liberate parts of ukraine from russia. All the money and effort we have made to help the Ukrainian Military has back pay dividends. I will talk in more detail about that. Back to matters here at home. Chalmers carr iii is a constituent of mine, he is in the farming business. We have been seeking a solution to a problem for years. Lets start with the idea that it is a problem. I am surprised that only 60 of the people work in agriculture gr immigrants. I thought it would be more. What we have is a dilemma. Nobody on this committee wants to deny American Workers a job. You cannot get an h2a visa until you try to hire an american to do the job. Legal immigration is designed to help American Companies who fall short in hiring here at home so they can have a robust workforce added to the native born workforce to keep the company in america so that they do not have to leave. The visa programs supplement the american citizen workforce to give the employer a chance to stay in business. The problem is that it is difficult for employers to find workers in certain areas of our economy. H2a, we are not denying an American Worker job. The problem we have is if we legalize the agricultural workforce, give legal status without secure in our border and changing our asylum laws first, you will have a run on this country that you have never seen. It will be pouring gasoline on a fire. I am not antagonistic to trying to find a solution to the agricultural dilemma of creating a more robust legal system so that you can access legal workers and some can stay because they would add value to the country. But if we legalize everybody here in the Agricultural Sector without first securing our border and changing the magnets that are drawing 6 Million People in the last couple of years to our country, then we will have made the problem worse. I am very sympathetic to the dilemma faced by the immigrant workforce and by the employers, but the solution of legalizing millions of people in the Agricultural Community without first dealing with the broken borders and a broken asylum system is illconceived. Thank you. Chair durbin i do not disagree with you but i think there was an orderly way to do this and the bills prepared by senator bennett really put a time requirement on this so that the workers have to be here for i think it is 20 years under one of our proposals. So this will not be a run on the border. You have to show you are reliable worker and trustworthy future american over long period of time to qualify. I am all for orderly process at the border. I think we all agree on that. If we have specific numbers coming in i think it will avoid the calamitous outcome that you think may happen. I hope i am right. Lets see if the witnesses can add anything to that. We have five witnesses. Our first witness is Diana Tellefson torres, the chief executive officer of the ufw foundation. We are also joined by adam lytch of l m farms. Daniel costa, director of Immigration Law and policy research of the Economic Policy institute. Senator graham our witnesses are leon sequeira. He is currently an attorney in private practice where he represents agricultural employers. He served as assistant secretary of labor under president george w. Bush. He was involved in developing the immigration policy reforms, including the first overhaul of the h2a program in more than 20 years. Our second witness is my constituent, Chalmers Carr iii of titan farms. He oversees a farming operation consisting of peaches and vegetables and employees over850 workers annually. He is a member of the South Carolina agricultural commissions. I have been to his firm and he has the best peaches in the world. Chair durbin we are going to have a peach competition. Thank you, senator graham. Five minute opening statements. We kick it off with the oath. I asked each witness to stand and raise the right hand. Do you affirm the testimony you are about to give is the truth so help you god . Let the record reflect the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Diana tellefson torres, you are first. Chairman durbin, Ranking Member grassley and distinguished members of the committee, i want to thank you for this opportunity to testify. My name is Diana Tellefson torres and i am the ceo of the ufw foundation. Jackie began picking blueberries at age 14. Our nations food supply relies on 2 million farmworkers, half of whom are u. S. Citizens. From workers across the country will probably share about the decades they have worked feeding the nation and much of the world. Our fellow unit is citizens who were farmworkers often live in poverty and struggle to feed their own families. 50 either do not have documentation or are here through the h2a program. Lack of legal status combined with the shameful history of excluding the industry from basic labor laws such as overtime pay makes farmworkers vulnerable to abuses. The threat of Immigration Enforcement is a form of coercion that employers can use against undocumented and h2a workers. U. S. Citizens also often work in fear as they know they can easily be replaced by more vulnerable workers. As far from california who has worked as a farmworker for 25 years asked me to tell you to please pass legalization for farmworkers so that you may see our families without fear, that me we may work without fear. Today, the United States has a choice. We can recognize the incredible value farmworkers and work towards a day when the industry is characterized by workers who live without fear because they have a way to earn citizenship and enjoy equal labor rights. This will enable farmworkers to stay in agriculture and hope the industry thrive. Or we can continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that too many farmworkers work without legal authorization and the existing h2a program has become the worst source of Human Trafficking and workers too often have the rights violated. A number of h2a jobs approved has increased rapidly from 79,000 two 371,000. It is hard to know which stories to tell when it comes to the lives of too many h2a workers. I hope you have read my testimony and understand the problems for h2a workers often begin before they get to this country. H2a workers come to this country indentured. Federal law excludes h2a workers from the Worker Protection act. Workers live in substandard conditions, work in extreme conditions for over 10 hours per day, experience wage theft and do not speak up. This is why our increasing reliance on the h2a program threatens the conditions of all farmworkers. Congress not passing bipartisan agricultural reform is an active choice to support a deeply flawed system, harming both workers and lawabiding employers. That is why we have worked for decades to craft Bipartisan Solutions to enable career farmworkers to gain legal status and to reform the h2a program. They have come to an agreement to move forward bipartisan agricultural immigration bills that won the majority votes in the house or senate during the administrations of president s bush, obama, trump and biden. Many of you here today have been part of those efforts. We have come so frustratingly close in passing agricultural immigration bills and we remain ready to partner again. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about the important work that farmworkers do. Chair durbin thank you. Leon sequeira. Thank you. Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today about the Critical Role of the h2a program in providing farmworkers to americans firms. Migrant workers farm. There has been a profound shortage of Domestic Labor and misguided policy that makes it hard to farm. Each year both of these factors get worse. The lack of sufficient Domestic Labor means farmers with intensive farming operations have no choice but to rely on the h2a program. Throughout its history the program has been plagued by complicated regulations, inefficiency, high cost, processing delays, artificial limits on which agricultural employers can participate and open hostility from the department of labor. Despite the programs shortcomings, farmers have no other legal option. Each year the department of labor makes it harder to use the h2a program. In the event there is a lingering doubt about whether there are sufficient numbers of workers, a few statistics will make this clear. In 2022 form is submitted 18,000 applications for certification of about 370,000 positions. As part of the certification process, these positions were advertised nationwide and farmers were required to hire any u. S. Applicant that met qualifications. Fewer than 300 u. S. Workers accepted these positions. That is six one hundredths of 1 of available farmworker openings filled by u. S. Workers. To said another way if math is not your strong suit, for every 10,000 farmworker job openings, just six were filled by u. S. Workers. Participating in the h2a program is not for the faint of heart. Its cost and difficulty is legendary. Over the past five years, the annual labor wage rates have increased by 5 . The wages more than 16 per hour. Farmers must provide free housing and free daily transportation benefits that no other employer provides. Farmers also pay all the expenses of their workers in traveling to the United States and returning home each year. Despite the lack of workers willing to perform this work in the United States, the department of labor has recently devised another way to ratchet wage rates and farm production costs even higher. New regulations will change how h2a wage rates are calculated and they decided to increase rates for certain basic tasks such as driving a truck, transporting a worker or erecting offense. A fence. This will lead to disruptive operations. My written testimony contains a more detailed description of how these new regulations will harm americas farmers. They assume every time they increase wages, farmers will increase their prices to recover costs. But the department is oblivious to a central element in the agricultural economy. Farmers do not get to set the price of their products. The market sets the price and the market is dominated by lowcost imports, especially from mexico, where the required wage rate is the equivalent of 1011 dollars per day. In the United States, from workers must be paid 16 per hour on average. Is it any wonder we have a 37 billion trade deficit in fruits and vegetables with mexico . The department of labor is pursing farmers out of business. This will be the first year in which the United States imports more food than it exports. That should be a clear warning to policymakers that government policy must change. We need a solution that provides farmers access to labor with a fair cost structure that enables them to remain competitive in the marketplace. Otherwise, we will be totally dependent on Foreign Countries to feed us. Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity. Chair durbin adam lytch. Good morning. Our operations span several states, and we produce a variety of specialty crops. Let me thank chairman durbin and regan member graham for the opportunity to come here today to speak on this issue. The domestic workforce crisis can you pull your microphone closer . Thank you. This history transforms politics and we need reforms that will allow us to have a stable workforce. Like many farm kids, a group wanted to do the same thing my father did. I grew up in the fields alongside him and other workers. It was all hard work. I remember over 30 years ago it started to become harder for my family to find workers. Our existing workforce had become to age out. Others no longer wanted to pursue this type of work. A man from mexico stopped by to ask for a job. He simply wanted to be here so that his family in mexico could have a better life. As the years went by, he started to recruit more workers from mexico. A family operation had no other way to meet our Seasonal Work needs. I began to understand that american agriculture was dependent on imMigrant Workers to get the job done. Fast forward 30 years and not much has changed. Americas food system still requires Seasonal Workers. As American Farmers we face a variety of challenges. Most of these are things we cannot control, like weather, Market Conditions and supply disruptions. The single Biggest Issue we face is the unprecedented shortage of Domestic Labor. The h2a program is currently our only option. The program is greatly flawed and made even more challenging by the federal agency entrusted to administer it. Under the h2a program, the wage rate is set each year for workers, the methodology of which lacks transparency. There are no American Workers willing to do these jobs. American families are the ones being adversely affected as our workforce crisis will continue to drive food prices higher. We treat our workers fairly and most of them