Georgia Congressmen Seek Changes To Agriculture Guest Worker Program
Bill Brim of Lewis Taylor Farms in Tifton, Georgia, hires about 500 workers through the temporary guest worker program called H-2A.
Elly Yu / WABE
Some Georgia Congressmen are seeking changes to a temporary guest worker program used in agriculture, called H-2A. Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter, R-Ga-1, and others met with U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta on Tuesday.
Carter said he and other members of Congress, including those from other states, presented a list of changes they’d like to see made to the program to make it easier for farmers to hire H-2A workers. Farmers currently are required to do things like provide free housing for workers — lawmakers would like to allow employers, for example, to charge a minimum fee.
“In order to continue to have a strong agriculture presence in our country, we have to have workers, and certainly the H-2A program is extremely important to making sure that we have the workers that we need,” Carter said. “These are jobs that farmers just cannot find American workers who are willing to do this and have any interest at all in doing this.”
The Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting.
Several bills in Congress aimed at changing the H-2A program are pending, including one introduced by another Georgia Congressman, Rick Allen, R-Ga-12.
A group of Georgia farmers sent a letter to the state’s congressional delegation earlier this year asking for legislative and regulatory changes to the program.
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