Articles Tagged with ''farmworkers''

Agriculture groups are planning to appeal to the Biden administration for an exemption from the upcoming South Africa travel ban to allow H-2A workers to get to the United States to start work on U.S. farms.

President Joe Biden’s proposal to provide a path to legal status for illegal immigrants offers farm groups a new chance to persuade Congress to expand the availability of guest workers for agriculture, but winning critical Republican support for a major immigration bill could be harder than ever in the post-Trump era.

California agricultural employers are continuing to adapt to the increasing minimum wage and the rollout of new overtime pay requirements, sometimes by moving away from manual labor to mechanized solutions. The rest of the country is watching closely to see whether these farm labor trends expand.

In one of his first acts as president, Joe Biden is sending an immigration bill to Congress that offers a pathway to citizenship for about 11 million undocumented workers, including about a million farmworkers.

The Labor Department finalized a series of changes Friday to ease some application and employment rules for the H-2A visa program.

Members of the American Farm Bureau Federation gathered virtually Thursday to assess the changes the organization would pursue in its lengthy policy book.

USDA officials tell Agri-Pulse they are working “amicably” with the Biden transition team, which is paving the way for the incoming administration next week. On the international front, the transition team has been pressing USDA for details on the impacts of the “phase one” trade deal with China.

Many states are falling behind in their early projections of how quickly they will be able to deploy COVID-19 vaccines, and many are still working to determine where ag workers will be on their vaccination prioritization schedules.

A federal judge is blocking the Trump administration from carrying out changes to the H-2A minimum wage rates that would hold down annual pay increases.

Frontline essential workers, including those in the food and agriculture industry, should be in the second group to receive COVID-19 vaccines, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Sunday.