Nation Has No Shortage of Farm Workers, Study Finds

There is no shortage of farm workers now or in the foreseeable future, according to a government study scheduled for release today that is expected to dampen efforts next year to bring thousands more foreigners into the country temporarily to harvest crops and till fields.

While specific regions and growers of particular crops often lack enough workers, “a sudden widespread farm labor shortage requiring the importation of large numbers of foreign workers . . . does not appear to exist now and is unlikely in the near future,” concludes the final report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, a copy of which was obtained by The Times.

Rather, the report says that an oversupply of workers has prevented farm wages from keeping pace with inflation over the past decade and has triggered unemployment rates as much as double the national average in the nation’s 20 leading agricultural counties.

And while as much as 40% of the nation’s 1.5 million farm workers are in the country illegally, “INS enforcement is unlikely to generate significant farm labor shortages” because the agency rarely targets agricultural employers, the report says.

The report recommends against significant expansion of the current guest worker program, which brought about 15,000 people to the United States last year. Instead, it suggests several minor changes to improve the program, such as reducing the number of agencies that handle applications and shortening the processing period.

The report also suggests that U.S. citizens and legal residents, particularly those leaving the welfare rolls because of recent changes in the law, be trained for farm work.

Launched after the House rejected an expanded guest worker program as part of last spring’s overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, the new study probably will hurt efforts by California growers and others in agriculture-related businesses to pass one of three pending bills that would radically increase the number of temporary visas given for farm work.

The GAO audits, studies and reviews government programs and related issues for Congress.

Some growers--and California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, a Republican candidate for governor--have advocated a revival of the bracero program that brought hundreds of thousands of workers, mostly from Mexico, to toil in California’s fields between World War II and 1965.

Lungren, who supported the guest worker concept while a congressman for 10 years, has proposed that a set number of Mexicans be allowed into the United States to work in agriculture. Part of their pay would be deposited at a U.S. Consulate office in Mexico to provide an incentive to return home after completing their U.S. stay.

Critics of Lungren’s plan say that it would create an unfair, two-tier labor system in the state. Labor activists and some conservatives oppose any revival of the bracero program, fearing that temporary workers would not return home, creating a vast new pool of illegal immigrants.

“This effort to try and push a guest worker program is really just a thinly disguised effort to build in a constant oversupply of farm workers to keep wages down and have a group of people who will not fight to get the workers’ rights the law entitles them to,” said U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles).

“The report totally deflates the political effort . . . to enact another bracero program,” Berman said. “It confirms what every objective student of the situation has been saying for years: There’s really an oversupply of agricultural workers.”

But James Holt, an economist who represents the National Council of Agricultural Employers, said the report is flawed because it assumes that the INS will continue its lax enforcement in agribusiness. Less than 5% of INS enforcement efforts targeted agricultural businesses last year, resulting in the arrest of 700 workers, or about 4% of the employees at the targeted work sites, according to the report.

“I don’t think anybody’s saying there’s a shortage of people to do farm work--it’s that there’s a shortage of people with documents,” Holt said, citing a recent Department of Labor study that estimated that 37% of farm workers are in the United States illegally.

Holt noted that the study came in conjunction with last year’s immigration reform act, which demanded electronic verification of work documents by employers. The GAO study, however, predicts little change in INS enforcement.

The report acknowledges that the large number of illegal workers--about 600,000 nationwide--leaves growers vulnerable to sudden shortages caused by targeted INS enforcement. But it argues that implementation of the law’s document verification requirement remains “in the early stages” and says the impact of full implementation “is unknown.”

The study is based on interviews with dozens of officials, growers and worker advocates, and an analysis of labor statistics. A key finding is that unemployment rates in the 20 counties with major fruit, nut and vegetable production--including 13 in California--consistently are higher than the national rate.

Imperial County’s unemployment rate, for example, has been 25% to 30% in recent years, compared to 7% and 8% in California and 5% to 6% nationwide. Nineteen of the 20 counties had unemployment rates above the national average from 1994 to 1996, and 11 of the 20 counties had double the national rate in June 1997.

The GAO found that the tobacco industry and more remote areas such as Nevada have found it increasingly difficult to get enough workers. Labor advocates and government officials suggested boosting wages to lure experienced agricultural workers back to the fields and shuttling former welfare recipients into farm work.

However, some growers resisted these proposals, saying that “it is unlikely that many former welfare recipients would have the ability to be suitable farm workers” and suggesting that transporting people from urban centers to rural work sites would be problematic.

The Labor Department said the GAO may have even underestimated the surplus in farm workers. Its review of the report emphasized poor conditions endured by many farm workers and said “the real challenge” in improving their well-being and meeting agricultural needs “is not to legalize the flow of migrant labor . . . but to substantially improve job-matching services between growers and legal domestic farm workers.”

The Agriculture Department criticized the report for accepting the high level of illegal workers.

Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak in Los Angeles contributed to this story.