Idaho employers seek help from foreign labor program. Others call for immigration reform
Idaho business owners are short on workers. The state faces a 2.4% unemployment rate, and many business owners, including farmers, are entering the busy season without all the workers they need.
In 2016, the latest year for which data are available, Idaho’s farmers relied on nearly 3,000 foreign workers on temporary agricultural visas, called H-2A visas. That number has been steadily increasing, according to experts, and the need for nonagricultural temporary foreign workers has also increased.
“What I have seen for both temporary agricultural and temporary nonagricultural visa applications is that over the past 20 years the use and the need has steadily increased over time, but the last two years there has been an exponential increase year over year in employers needs,” said Joel Anderson, executive director of Snake River Farmers Association, a Heyburn organization that helps agricultural employers hire through the H-2A program.
It is not unusual for the agricultural industry to rely heavily on foreign workers to fill jobs, but this year many nonagricultural businesses are desperate to fill jobs and are requesting foreign workers to fill them. Nonagricultural employers apply for foreign workers through the H-2B program. The H-2B program has a cap, 66,000, on the number of workers permitted to work in the U.S.
“You are just lucky if you get it,” said Hailey Bodle, president of the Idaho Nursery and Landscape Association. “We are all sharing a minimal amount of people. There is not enough labor to get work done in Idaho.”
Non-agricultural businesses rely on foreign workers
In December, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor announced it would increase the number of foreign workers they allow to work in the U.S. on the non-agricultural H-2B work visas. This increase marks the first time since the visa program was implemented that the government had such a huge demand that it had to increase capacity.
The federal government added 20,000 visas to the 33,000 visas it expects to distributes by March 31. The U.S. also distributes another 33,000 visas during the second part of the fiscal year, around October.
“When employers have interested U.S. applicants, they don’t like to turn to these programs, because they are expensive, fraught with government paperwork, and for some places that doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Anderson said.
But he has noticed the last few years that the Idaho employers who were not interested in the program previously have started saying they need to enroll to overcome their worker shortage.
H-2B workers can fill jobs in construction, landscaping, housekeeping and restaurants. To apply for H-2B workers, employers must establish that “there are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work.”
Temporary work is defined as either a one-time need, seasonal need, intermittent need, or a need to meet in a peak-demand season.
“It is a complete lottery,” said Bodle. “I heard of a landscape company needing workers in the program and they didn’t get any workers for two years.”
Bodle said for Idaho landscape businesses, the need for H-2B workers to fill jobs is greater than ever.
Idaho dairy farmers struggle with workers
Idaho’s dairy farmers have struggled to hire enough workers for their operations for nearly a decade. Today, Idaho’s dairy farms are short by 4,400 to 4,600 workers — the highest number in the last 10 to 15 years, said Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, by phone.
Despite the shortage, Idaho’s dairy industry continues to grow. In 2012, Naerebout said Idaho’s dairies employed 8,000 workers to tend to 550,000 cows. Today the industry has 4,400 workers to tend to 650,000 cows, he said.
“That cow-to-worker ratio has increased,” Naerebout said. “The rule of thumb is one worker per 100 cows. If you do the math, our workforce now is about one worker for 140 cows.”
Naerebout, along with industry leaders across the country, has attributed the labor shortage to immigration troubles.
“We had 560 families (who ran dairies) in the industry a decade ago,” Naerebout said. “Today we have 400. We have lost small businesses, and labor shortages are a reason for that.”
Dairy farmers do not have access to the seasonal H-2A program, because dairies need workers year-round. Even so, Naerebout said the industry is made up of about 90% immigrant workers.
Many of Idaho’s dairy workers are undocumented, because American workers don’t seek farm jobs and dairies do not have access to a visa program.
Naerebout said all industries now are competing for workers in the same pool. He said dairymen have raised their starting wages to $15 an hour for entry-level positions and even more in more rural areas.
“They are paying very competitive wages, but this is bigger than a wage issue,” he said.
Immigration reform is the most logical and business-friendly way of fixing the labor problem in the U.S., Naerebout said.
“We have jobs people want to fill, we just have to let them into our country,” he said. “They are looking for the same things you and I are looking for — to work and provide for their families. Our immigration policy inhibits them from doing that.”
Naerebout stressed the need to get the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a bill that would provide undocumented agricultural workers with a path to legal status, through the U.S. Senate. He said Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo is working with Democrats at the negotiating table in Washington.
This story was originally published February 22, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
