Federal Declaration Deals Setback to Farm Worker Legalization Program

U.S. authorities have determined that no shortage of field labor is anticipated this year, a finding that is a severe blow to more than 600,000 foreign agricultural workers seeking legal residence through a little-publicized section of the sweeping 1986 reforms to immigration law.

An official finding of a shortage of U.S. agricultural workers was needed to trigger the so-called Replenishment Agriculture Worker, or RAW, program. That program includes the prospect of eventual permanent legal status in the United States for participants.

The federal Labor and Agriculture departments, which have been studying the farm markets, made a quiet finding earlier this month that no shortage of field hands is anticipated during the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. New evaluations are to be made annually until 1993, when the four-year program expires.

The 1990 decision dashes the hopes, at least for now, of more than 600,000 foreign nationals who have been attempting to achieve legal U.S. residence status through the RAW program. More than half of the applicants are believed to be undocumented Mexican workers already residing in California, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The RAW initiative has been complex and confusing from the outset. Many applicants have been left with the mistaken impression that they are in the pipeline for a more secure amnesty program, immigrant advocates say. And in some cases, authorities and immigrant advocates say, unscrupulous lawyers, consultants and others have been charging immigrants hundreds and even thousands of dollars to process their RAW program applications, even though the official entry fee is only $10.

The program was designed as a kind of insurance policy for U.S. agribusiness, particularly in the West, where growers feared a mass desertion of the fields by laborers legalized under the various amnesty provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Widespread shortages of agricultural labor have not developed, industry spokesmen say, although there have been spot shortages in California and elsewhere.

In fact, advocates representing farm workers say, there has been a huge surplus of labor in California and elsewhere, prompting considerable unemployment and under-employment in the fields, both among legal and illegal U.S. residents.

The RAW program provides for eventual permanent legal status for participants, who have to be at least 18 years old and have worked in U.S. agriculture for at least 20 days during a recent 12-month period. If accepted into the program, workers must perform field work for at least 90 days in each of three consecutive years in order to become permanent legal residents.

However, the program’s guidelines provide that no one will be selected unless there is a finding by U.S. authorities that there is a shortage of farm workers.

Western agricultural spokesmen said the determination that there currently is an ample labor supply could leave them in a precarious predicament should unanticipated labor shortfalls develop during the coming planting and harvest seasons. The multibillion-dollar farm industry in California and the West has long been dependent on the labor of undocumented workers earning minimum-wage salaries for long hours of difficult work.

“Fresh fruit and vegetables will rot before Congress gets around to filling a (labor) shortage,” noted Barbara Buck, a spokeswoman for the Western Growers Assn., which represents growers in California and Arizona.

Immigrant rights advocates were also disappointed by the finding, as they viewed the RAW program as one last chance to legalize the status of many undocumented people.

The RAW initiative is the least-known legalization, or amnesty, provision of the 1986 immigration overhaul. The law’s two other better-known legalization initiatives--one aimed at farm workers and the other at undocumented immigrants who had lived in the United States since 1982--have generated more than 3 million applications nationwide, more than half of them from California residents.