News

Members of Congress look to appropriations for H-2A labor cost freeze

A U.S. Congressman says he’s working with House appropriation leaders to pause H-2A guest worker program cost increases.

Michigan Republican Bill Huizenga tells Brownfield a bipartisan group of 120 lawmakers is trying to make farm labor a priority issue for the four corners of Congress in the lame duck.

“The Senate Majority and Minority Leader and the House Speaker and Minority Leader all sit down to try to hash out what are the issues that they’re going to be able to agree on,” he says. “We want this to be on that list of the conversation, so it’s not dead by any stretch of the imagination.”

Bill Fritz recently hosted the Congressman for a farmer roundtable at his sixth-generation blueberry farm in Paw Paw to discuss the impact of H-2A labor rates, which are the fourth highest in the country in Michigan.

“Everybody’s feeling the same pinch with paying that high of a wage that it just doesn’t make any sense anymore, that you can’t be in business,” he says. “The numbers don’t work out anymore.”

The cost to use the program has increased by nearly 20 percent in the last five years in Michigan to $18.50 which is nearly 80 percent higher than the current minimum wage without including housing, transportation, and other costs associated with using the program.

Huizenga says addressing the high costs is more of an operational issue rather than a political one.

“I’m hoping that the facts of the situation reign supreme here, and that this doesn’t get caught up in the politics,” he says.

Fritz says as the chairman of the Michigan Blueberry Growers Association, he’d also like to see one federal rate to eliminate regional disparities for farmers across the country.

AUDIO: Congressman Bill Huizenga