"Washington state farm workers worry about boom in legal foreign workers,"

... US-based farms and growers are increasingly looking to hire H-2A workers, foreign agricultural laborers allowed to temporarily work in the country under federal law enacted in the late 1980s...

Until April, Alberto worked for a large farm that grows daffodils, tulips and other flowers. In previous years, he used to work long hours and up to seven days each week. This year, he and other workers started getting fewer hours and sometimes had multiple days off each week.

Alberto explained through a translator that his bosses began complaining that local workers were taking too much time off to handle family commitments – something that H-2A workers, often men who leave their families for US fields and wages, might do less frequently. Then, one day, Alberto drove past the farm and saw workers he didn’t recognize doing the work he and others would typically do. Later, after a long shift, the company announced to all the farm workers that this would be their last day of the season. But instead of closing up shop, the grower continued business as usual – this time with H-2A workers...

Alfredo Juarez is a farm worker and campaign director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), an independent labor union of 400 farm workers in Washington state. He argues that the steady growth of the H-2A program is starting to crowd out domestic workers for more easily exploited guest workers. H-2A workers have traditionally not been allowed to organize – though a Biden-administration rule tried unsuccessfully to change that this summer. And that lack of rights puts them at the mercy of abusive employers and changes working conditions for all...

Alberto, who secured another job harvesting blueberries, echoed that sentiment. “We are not against the [H-2A] workers, but the system that pits us against each other.” But he still asked: “What happens to the people who have been working and supporting this industry for so many years?”