Congressman Fred Upton has spoken with some Berrien County farmers about their struggles with finding enough labor for the growing and harvesting seasons. Many have complained about administrative delays with the H2A visa program, which is used to bring in seasonal migrant labor to help farms overcome a lack of domestic workers. Russell Costanza, of Costanza Farms in Sodus Township, hosted Upton Wednesday. He says federal agencies administering the H2A program are too slow to meet the needs of farms.
“There’s too many agencies,” Costanza told WSJM News. “The co-mingle of those agencies to get the work done timely, which is supposed to be 30 days, is not happening.”
One problem is the fact that some agencies rely on snail mail to communicate with farmers trying to get approval for seasonal migrant workers. Congressman Upton says that should be possible to fix.
“To think that they’re still relying on snail mail, versus the Internet or even a phone call, which just adds weeks to the approval process is just not acceptable,” Upton said.
Upton says he will go back to Washington and speak with members of the House Agriculture Committee to help bring about some reforms. Many of the delays in securing migrant labor are due to slow response times from the US Labor and Homeland Security Departments.
