B Stands for Berries

Good afternoon,

Last week, American families gathered to give thanks and partake in delicious meals together. Without farmworkers, majority of which are immigrants, those meals would not be possible. The award-winning film, The Last Harvest, produced by Farm League and funded by our friends at Driscoll’s, puts a spotlight on the critical role immigration plays in our agricultural system.

Farms around the country are struggling to fill laborer positions – and have been for some time. In 2019, over half of California farmers reported that they fell short of hiring the number of workers they needed over the last five years. Fewer and fewer U.S. citizens want agricultural jobs. The work is difficult, exhausting and can be dangerous. Hand-harvesting, the method 75% of fruit in the U.S. is dependent on, is especially demanding. Farmers have turned to immigrants to fill the labor gaps, but that too has been a challenge.

The H-2A program, which allows U.S. employers to bring in foreign nationals to fill temporary agricultural jobs, is a cumbersome, outdated and expensive process. Less than 10% of the immigrant agricultural workforce comes from the program. As a result, many immigrant farmworkers are undocumented.

As The Last Harvest shows, without immigrant workers, farmers cannot harvest all their produce, like berries, fast enough. This hurts the farms, other agricultural related industries and increases costs for customers. It also causes the U.S. economy to miss out on as much as $3.1 billion in missed GDP growth each year.

The takeaway: we need immigration reform to keep fresh food on our tables.

Join us in urging Congress to provide a pathway to legalization for undocumented farmworkers and enhance the H-2A guestworker program. Our food supply depends on it.

Stay healthy and hopeful,

Adam

P.S. You can watch The Last Harvest for free on Vimeo until the end of 2021!

Adam Estle
Vice President of Field and Constituencies
National Immigration Forum 

NEWS CLIPS TO NOTE:

REUTERS: UN official criticizes migrant deportations from southern U.S. border

NEW YORK TIMES: For Afghan Refugees, a Choice Between Community and Opportunity

BLOOMBERG: The Number of Immigrant Workers With H1-B Visas Drops the Most in a Decade

FRONTERAS DESK: The Biden administration's proposed rule change on DACA draws more than 9,000 comments

THE HILL: COVID-19 compounding root causes for mass migration to US: research