For Farmers, Workers Are Key

In an area known for $15 green juices and pop-up Nobu restaurants, the lack of low-cost labor on the East End is no surprise. And as local farmers try to alleviate the labor shortage, they are increasingly turning to the H2-A agricultural worker visa program, whose large bureaucracy can prove burdensome.“There has been more interest in the H2-A, particularly because of the labor shortage on Long Island,” said Robert Carpenter, administrative director of the Long Island Farm Bureau.

“This program allows you to do this the right way,” said Jenn Halsey, a local farmer who has used the H2-A visa program to hire workers for more than 10 years.

While on an H2-A visa, migrant workers pay federal and state income tax, and they are able to get licenses to drive. However, securing the visa requires a lot of work on the part of farmers to ensure that their workers actually make it to the East End.

The process involves multiple state and federal agencies, from the New York State Department of Labor to the Federal Department of Labor. The coordination required between these agencies can make it difficult for small-scale producers to ensure that their workers arrive on time. It also is difficult for year-round farming operations, like dairies or tree fruit farms, as they require year-round help, which is not offered through the program.

“To get them here April 2, I would start the end of January, just processing paperwork,” said Ms. Halsey, who has had mishaps along the way that led to workers being delayed or not arriving at all. “I don’t believe anything until they are in my car at JFK airport.”

Mr. Carpenter sees this as one of the faults of the H2-A program, pointing out that, “in farming, you need to stick to a strict schedule, you need to plant corn by April to have some by the Fourth of July.”

Unfortunately, as with anyone traveling into America on a visa, the final step of the process is clearance by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which means that even though all the paperwork might be approved, the process is not complete until a worker clears immigration at the border.

“They are just making it harder and harder,” said Tish Rehill, a local business owner who uses the similar H2-B visa for seasonal workers at her landscaping company. “I am trying to do it legally.”

In addition to more than a week of her time spent on paperwork, Ms. Rehill spends at least $10,000 every year with an agency in Virginia that facilitates the application process. Despite these hurdles, Ms. Rehill’s business grew from using 10 workers on H2-B visas nearly 12 years ago to at least 20 on H2-B visas today.

“You would really think we were trying to bring criminals into the country,” said Ms. Rehill, who begins the process in the end of August to ensure her crew can arrive in early spring. “They are helping our economy, whether people want to believe it or not,” she said of the workers.

Each year, farmers have to navigate the system all over again, often with varying results.

Asked to comment on the length and inconsistencies in the approval process, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration said that all decisions were handled on a case-by-case basis by individual adjudicators who exercise their own discretion.”

While there are no figures available for the East End or even Long Island, the Labor Department estimates that half of the 1.2 million agricultural field workers are in the U.S. illegally.

"You have all this demand, who is going to do this work?” said Ms. Halsey, who feels that the number of local workers has declined even as the service industry has grown exponentially thanks to an uptick in summer population—the Suffolk Planning Commission says the peak summer population grew by 62,000 between 1990 and 2010.

“A lot of kids are moving away because you can’t afford to buy a house," Ms. Halsey said. "My dad has always said, ‘You can survive in the Hamptons, if you are willing to work, but finding housing is an issue.’”

Ms. Rehill is required to advertise locally for a landscape crew before she can hire workers through the H2-A visa program. The people who have replied lived in the Bronx or Queens and did not pursue the job when they realized the lack of public transportation to the East End.

Ms. Halsey is also required to advertise the position in the tristate area, but in the past four years, no one has applied.

“There is a lot of regulation and red tape in the program and we would like for the H2-A visa program to be reformed,” said Mr. Carpenter, mentioning a computer glitch that caused all temporary and immigrant visas to be held up this past June, which led to a crisis for farmers nationally. "It is growing," he said of the H2-A visa program, "but it is only because there are no other options for labor.”

Ms. Halsey said it would be impossible to run the farm without the help of legal migrant workers.

“The farmers here need to be particular about what they do and how they do it,” said Mr. Carpenter of the visa program. “They can’t make mistakes.”

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