While immigration continues to be a hot-button issue on Capitol Hill, a bipartisan group of representatives are renewing the push for the Farm Workforce Modernization Act — legislation that seeks to boost foreign worker availability in the U.S., with benefits to both employers and laborers — in hopes the bill may finally have a vehicle to become law.

What You Need To Know

  • The Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which has passed the House twice in previous sessions without getting a vote in the Senate, has a bipartisan group of representatives renewing a push for the bill that seeks to ease agricultural labor shortages

  • The bill seeks to make the H-2A visa program more responsive for employers, while giving workers a pathway to legal status in the U.S. should they choose to pursue it

  • One hang-up could be an electronic work eligibility provision, which would set up a "mandatory, nationwide E-Verify system for all agricultural employment"

  • Experts warn that without a solution to the workforce shortage, prices could continue to rise and ultimately force a decline in American agriculture production

The bipartisan group, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has 9 original co-sponsors, including Reps. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., Jim Costa, D-Calif, Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., David Valadao, R-Calif., Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., John Duarte, R-Calif., Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.  The bill, which has passed through the House twice already in past sessions, aims to create “a workforce solution for America's agriculture industry, one of the most critical sectors of the national economy.” It failed to get a vote both times in the Senate.

“We need a labor supply — steady labor supply — and a growing labor supply quite honestly, to meet our food security needs here in America. Here in America, the lowest income working families in America are spending up to a third of their total income on food,” Rep. John Duarte said in an interview with Spectrum News. “If we don't do everything we can to keep food affordable here in America for working families, there is going to be a nutrition crisis, there is going to be a food security crisis.”

For employers, the bill focuses on modifications to make the H-2A visa program more responsive and user-friendly and provides access to the program for industries with year-round labor needs. For workers, it would establish a program to choose to earn legal status through continued agricultural employment and contribution to the U.S. agricultural economy.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act tries to strike a balance for both the workers and employers. For workers, it establishes an opportunity for agricultural workers to choose to earn legal status through continued agriculture employment and contribution to the U.S. agriculture economy. Applicants must undergo background checks and, if they want to stay, can earn a green card by paying a $1,000 fine and continuing agriculture work; for workers with 10 years of work, they must participate for 4 additional years, and workers with less than 10 years of work prior must complete 8 years. For those hiring, the bill focuses on modifications to make the H-2A visa program more user-friendly and provides access to the program for industries with year-round labor needs.

Though it received strong bipartisan support in the 116th and 117th Congress, it failed to get enough votes in the Senate both times. The bill was filed quietly last week before Congress left town for the Independence Day holiday.

“In the past few years, we’ve seen labor shortages contribute to high food prices. If it wasn’t obvious before, the pandemic made clear that our country’s agricultural workforce rules are in dire need of reform,” Lofgren said in a statement Friday. “The men and women who work America’s farms feed the nation. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act stabilizes the workforce, which will protect the future of our farms and our food supply. It’s well-past time we get this legislation that serves the best interests of our country to the President’s desk.”

Experts warn that without a solution to the workforce shortage, prices could continue to rise and ultimately force a decline in American agriculture production.

“Without additional workers, we're going to start having to import more food into the country rather than produce it domestically. Additional workers, additional manpower, is going to allow farmers to expand production which will help bring down food prices. We've seen food inflation over the last two years really accelerate. That's a consequence of production not being high enough to supply the amount of consumption demanded by the market,” explained David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

Duarte, a freshman Republican from California's Central Valley, is a farmer himself, growing grapes, almonds, and pistachios. He said he understands firsthand the need for a strong labor force, and said he thinks President Joe Biden will need to get involved on the issue.

“It's going to take leadership from the President, like we saw with the recent debt ceiling negotiations when the President sat down with [House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy and they made a deal and the President signed off on it and encouraged his party to put it across the line. That helps tremendously,” said Duarte. “There's a lot of rural areas, a lot of rural America, represented by Republican congressman, Republican senators. I think we're gonna put a lot of votes together. I think the Democrats need to put a lot of votes together. And this needs to be seen as a bipartisan effort for both solving problems on the farm.”

The bill comes on the heels of other bipartisan immigration legislation being introduced in the House in recent weeks, including the Dignity Act of 2023 and the Dream and Promise Act. Duarte is a co-sponsor on all of them, and says it’s going to take compromise to get a solution to the multifacet immigration problem facing the country.

“I think that the honest truth is that any immigration, whether it's a border security bill, or a DACA fix, or the Farm Worker Modernization Act, or the Dignity Act, which kind of includes all the above, it's going to be comprehensive. I don't think there's a reality that we're going to pass a Farm Worker Modernization Act and not secure the border,” Duarte admitted. “Border Security is going to be demanded by many, many Republicans, and many common sense Democrats who see the problems down there for what they are. The President simply got to do a better job.”

But one key hang up on the bill could be the Electronic Verification of the agricultural workforce component, also known as E-Verify. Per the summary, the bill “would establish a mandatory, nationwide E-Verify system for all agricultural employment, phased in after all legalization and H-2A reforms have been implemented, and including necessary due process protections for authorized workers who are incorrectly rejected by the system. This serves as the last necessary piece to ensure a legal workforce for the agricultural sector.”

Some members on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about E-Verify in recent months, including Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky, who called it a “huge mistake” in a tweet. Massie voted against his own party’s Secure Our Border Act over the E-Verify provision, as did California Rep. John Duarte, making them the only two Republicans to reject the bill.

Duarte says he supports the addition of the E-Verify provision here because of the pathway to legal status not provided in the Protect our Border Act.

“I think E-Verify, once we get to having a good guest worker program, we have a fix for DACA — they're not kids anymore, they're young adults, most of them — and we secure the border, E-Verify’s OK because we'll have a guest worker program and we'll have a lot a lot of the farmworkers who've been here in America living in the shadows to come out of the shadows and have a legal status here in America,” said Duarte.

But Bier sees the E-Verify program as “inherently flawed,” saying it will create regulatory burdens across the country on both employers and employees.

“We've had over a million US citizens and US legal workers be blocked [from] legal employment under E-Verify. So there are problems associated with E-Verify, it hasn't worked to stop illegal employment. All you need is a social security number and identification that matches somebody's name out there in the world in order to defeat the system,” explained Bier. “We know that the vast majority of hires that are undocumented are still cleared by the system because of the ease at which people can obtain someone else's identification in order to pass it whether it's a friend or family member or whoever. And so E-Verify is not going to stop the illegal employment problem.”

Whether the inclusion of E-Verify will be enough to sway some Republican voters remains to be seen, or whether it will be too far for some Democrats. But bipartisan discussions on Capitol Hill seem to be growing. And Duarte says he’s going to keep rolling with the momentum.

“I call myself immigration-fluid right now. I just want to get some of these problems solved while I'm here in Congress to improve a lot for a lot of my residents here in the Central Valley and to help secure America's food system and solve some national problems that really need to be solved,” said Duarte. “This is not only good for agriculture, I believe a lot of these more immigration friendly bills are in the long run good for America in general.”