Virginia's farms and seafood processors rely heavily on foreign workers.
But the federal visa system to get them is complicated and doesn't always work, even when there's not a global pandemic underway.
Spring is asparagus season. At Parker Farms in the Northern Neck, 30 foreign workers who come through the federal H-2A visa program are lined up along machines that wash and cut each stalk before they sort and pack bundles that ship to wholesalers and retailers like Kroger, Wegman's and Wal-Mart. Owner and General Manager, Rod Parker has been with the family-owned business for more than 45 years. He's one of the largest produce farmers on the Atlantic Coast.
Without foreign workers he'd have no business. In his office lobby is a wall of photos of past and present foreign workers. "So he's been here almost 40 years. This guy's still here, this guy's still here," Parker points out.
Near some of Parker's fields in Leedstown, along the Rappahannock River, his friend Gary Allensworth operates a small organic farm with his wife Lois. Their clients include Whole Foods and Clyde's Restaurants. They also have a local farm stand. Every year, both men hire an agency to do all their paperwork, pay fees and make travel arrangements to get seasonal workers. For Parker it's about 100 and for Allensworth it's just five.
Allensworth groans over the arduous process. "I got a little list in my pocket I'm going to take it out for my memory purposes," Allensworth says before he startes reading the note. "So, it is a federal program. It's called H-2A and I have no idea what H-2 stands for. I tried to look it up and it seems like nobody else knew either."
Parker has a list in his head. "The State Department is involved, U. S. Immigration is involved. Department of Labor is involved. And on the state you have the Virginia Employment Commission that gets involved, and you get your local health inspector, so there's quite a number of regulators that get involved."
Most of their workers are from the same villages in Mexico and return year after year. In Virginia, pay is $12.67 an hour, but unlike U. S. citizens, foreign workers don't pay taxes. Farmers pay for housing and transportation. Workers are highly skilled and average 60 to 80 hours a week including weekends, employees don't have to pay overtime. "We can't get enough American workers that will do the work," Gary Allensworth says. "Used to be you could hire high school kids. And once and a while now, you still can."
Now, he says there are few American workers who can match the skills of foreign farm workers. "If you hire that high school kid which has no training and you put them out there doing what those H-2A workers are doing, the program says pay them the same rate as you're paying those guys and I don't like that provision, because you're not getting the same return."
This year, with tighter border restrictions and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Allensworth farm didn't get all five of their workers in time to begin harvesting their strawberries and asparagus. Lois Allensworth says workers have been held up at the border, including her crew chief of 20 years, Mario, who arrived several weeks late. And they are still waiting on his nephew. "So we had no idea that this was going to be a problem for him to get a visa. But evidently it was. But the president said people with visas that were necessary are going to be able to come."
The strawberries came early this year and the Allensworths are concerned picking will overlap with getting their tomatoes planted. "I guess we're gonna dig somebody out of the bushes. But they can't do the work that my five guys I've got that work like a clock. So it's kind of important right now for me to get them back," Lois Allensworth says.
Meantime, the Allensworths have a new problem to contend with – operating their farm stand in the midst of a pandemic.
Visa lottery puts many Virginia seafood processors at the end of the line
Virginia's farms and seafood processors rely heavily on foreign workers with thousands of visas issued each year.
But Chesapeake Bay seafood processors that pick crabmeat and shuck oysters are limited by a different federal visa system that has a history of problems and this year, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it worse.
Just days after ringing in the New Year, Virginia seafood processors waited anxiously for news of how they placed in the federal foreign worker visa lottery system that randomly choses who gets workers first. For Johnny Graham, who runs Virginia's largest crab meat processing plant, it was bad news. "We don't have any of our 85 workers planning to come to Hampton to work this year. We were just one of many unlucky ones that was not able to acquire the draw of an A lottery bucket. We wound up in the D bucket, which is at the end of the line and we may be very well at the end of the line of our four generations of business," Graham fears.
For years, the seafood industry has been asking state and federal lawmakers to change the federal H-2B visa system. Like farms, they can't operate without their skilled workers who arrive mostly from Mexico every year to prepare seafood. U.S. workers who used to do the job are aging out and foreign workers are willing and skilled enough to replace them. Foreign farm workers have their own visa, the H-2A, but Graham's workers come under the H-2B visa which forces him to compete with a host of other seasonal industries including construction, landscaping and tourism. At best, he would get workers toward the end of May. "To miss the front end of probably the best two months of the business is the worst case scenario for us," Graham says.
To compound the problem, the government limits the number of H-2B workers that can enter the U.S. So, the industry is asking Congress to add them to a seasonal worker exemption given to fish roe processors. A.J. Erskine, who chairs the Virginia Seafood Council has been lobbying Washington hard. "Our season is not according to when the grass grows, not according to how many reservations we have for our hotel room. Those are important as well, I get it. But we are a manufacturer, we're a processor. Our seasons are dictated by state and federal regulation. It's very different than a service industry," Erskine argues.
In the midst of all this came the COVID-19 pandemic. So, even seafood houses that won a top spot in the H-2B lottery haven't received all their workers. Susan Wade owns J & W Seafood in Deltaville and Island Seafood on Gwynn's Island, which processes and sells seafood wholesale and retail. "We were one of the first groups who actually were processed visas with the H-2B. But with the current COVID issue everyone is being held up at the consulate this year," Wade says. So far only four out of 25 workers she needs to pick crabs and shuck oysters have arrived.
"It's been very hard. It's a trickle down effect of course. Not only did it affect me it affected the crabber who could not go out and work and it affected the bait man who he didn't buy bait from. It affects the community people, I've had to cut back on my employees in my store, we've cut back the hours in the store."
Statistics for the number of H2-B workers in Virginia are hard to come by as the state employment commission doesn't have them. They are buried somewhere in between several federal agencies including Labor, State and Homeland Security. Last week, President Trump eased fishing regulations to boost domestic production. But U.S. consulates remain closed so there still are not enough foreign workers to process seafood.
There is a a bit of good news coming from the retail shops of some seafood processors. Susan Wade is reporting those sales are keeping her afloat. And Johnny Graham, who is contemplating selling his wholesale warehouse. "Our retail store is setting records every day. Every day is a Friday, every week is a Fourth of July week," Graham says.
As Virginia keeps an eye on weekly coronavirus cases with the prospect of reopening the economy, the seafood industry is watching Congress for a better visa and for the administration to ease border restrictions.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.