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Georgia AG wants the administration of Trump to pay the increasing migrant farm • Georgia Recorder

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Georgia AG wants the administration of Trump to pay the increasing migrant farm • Georgia Recorder

Attorney General and the announced governor candidate Chris Carr hopes that a new administration in Washington will mean a relief for farmers in Georgia and uncertain conditions.

“The request of our office is to work with you and the Trump administration to tackle the increase (wage rate) before the Georgia agriculture is simply unaffordable” for his second term, Brooke Rollins and Lori Chavez deremer. “We believe that the health of our farms is directly associated with the interests of nutritional security, national security and the economic security of the United States.”

The Federal H-2A program offers people from abroad temporary work if not enough US workers are available for the job. The federal government sets its wage rate according to region, and the price is usually higher than for US workers. This is partly to prevent the farmers from importing cheap foreign workers and leaving American farmers unemployed.

On average, the rate for H-2A workers will increase by 4.5%, according to the US Farm Bureau, but the actual changes will vary depending on the region. In Georgia, the price of $ 14.68 will increase to $ 16.08 or 9.5%. According to the Bureau for Labor Statistics, wages for civil workers rose by 3.9%between September 2023 and 2024.

Overall, the lowest price for H-2A workers in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas will be $ 14.83 and the highest in Hawaii is $ 20.08.

In December in December, Carr's office turned to the officials of the Biden Administration Julie Su, the incumbent Labor Minister, and the Minister of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to express the concerns about the effects of rising wages on Georgia farmers.

According to Carr's Office, farmers actually pay more due to visa fees and travel and accommodation costs and argue that the government is not transparent in the methods with which they calculate the tariffs.

According to the Center for Agricultural and Economic Development of the University of Georgia, agriculture and related industries contributed 83.6 billion US dollars and 323,000 jobs to the Georgia economy. Carr argues that increasing the costs for farmers could endanger this industry.

However, H-2A workers are already at risk of poor working conditions and often do not even see the money they have owed, said Solimar Mercado-Spencer, director of the Department of Farmworker Rights Division at Georgia Legal Services, a non-profit law firm.

In a sting in 2021 known as an operation Blooming onion, the law enforcement officers accused two dozen people of using the H-2A program fraudulently to spend workers to South Georgia to work under conditions that the public prosecutor describes as modern slavery.

Three years later, H-2A workers have to do with exploitation and dangerous conditions.

Georgia currently houses more H-2A employees than any state except Florida. Most workers are men and about 90% of them come from Mexico, said Mercado-Spencer. They rarely speak English and are usually not familiar with the USA and its legal system.

Many use the money to support not only their women and children, but also their family. So they are usually striving to work, but are sometimes also used by recruiters who, in addition to real fees, invoice you for illegal junk fees for work.

“Since you pay all of these expenses in advance, you took back a loan in your country to afford it,” said Mercado-Spencer. “Since you started your work, you have already had these debts that you have to pay for, you think about it and then you come here with overcrowded apartments in a really bad form, extreme temperatures, without air conditioning or heating, if it is cold Workers who sleep on mattresses on the floor, in living rooms, because they have put so many workers at one point. “

Most workers in Georgia work in the southern part of the state and often work labor-intensive plants such as onions, blueberries and green peppers, said Mercado-Spencer.

“You can work for a long hours, there is no right to breaks, you don't have to take breaks, it is a very hard work, and then sometimes you will be short -circuited in your hours, so that you are not paid for your hours, or it is there Amounts that have been deducted from their salary checks that are sometimes wrong not legitimate deductions, so they are not paid for what they should be paid for, ”said Mercado-Spencer.

“Then, since they have these debts and are only authorized to work for the employer who has hired them with this visa, they really have no choice but to withstand these conditions so that they can at least earn some money and try to pay Back this loan, ”she added.

Mercado-Spencer said that a wage increase would pay more legal farmers or improve the conditions to attract American agricultural workers, but without enforcement it is skeptical that the workers who complain would benefit from an increase at all.

“We all, including the farmers, including the consumers, benefit from these labor workers from these workers,” she said. “So we should treat them fairly. It should not be a matter of going to farmers and consumers. We also have to think about the workers when we look at these problems and be respectful and grateful for their service. “

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