Guest Post: Coronavirus Threatens to Cripple U.S. Food Infrastructure
By Hunter Knapp, University of Colorado Law School
The downstream consequences of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, continue to mount. As of March 18, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suspended interviews for a variety of services, including interviews for new applicants to the H-2A guest worker program. Last year, the program facilitated the employment of more than 250,000 temporary workers, many of whom play a critical role in the country’s food infrastructure. Although USCIS announced it will be granting waivers to returning applicants whose previous visa expired within the last 12 months, affected industries fear the total H-2A workforce could decrease by as much as 50 percent. A reduction in the agricultural labor force of that magnitude could cripple the ability of farmers to bring in their harvests on schedule and the ability of grocery stores to restock shelves, leading to a wave of panic across the country.
Suspending in person interviews for H-2A applicants accords with the agency-wide closures by USCIS in response to COVID-19. In order to protect USCIS officers while also meeting the challenge to the country’s agricultural system, the Trump administration should expand the waiver process to include any previous beneficiary of an H-2A visa, not merely those from the previous year. A generous and efficient waiver policy should be expected when the Department of Homeland Security designated many of the workers who benefit from the H-2A program as “essential critical infrastructure workers.” Unfortunately, the recognition of these immigrant workers’ importance to society does not come with attendant pay or safety protections. Congressional action addressing the economic effects of COVID-19 excludes immigrants that do not file taxes as residents and those in mixed status families. To make matters worse, President Trump’s restrictive public charge rule negatively affects the healthcare of millions of immigrants and weakens the ability of the community to respond effectively to the pandemic. For decades, the United States relied on a class of immigrant workers to produce most of our food without showing those people the proper respect or humanity. How we respond now may determine whether COVID-19 leads to a collapse of food infrastructure not seen since the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.
More information about the impact of coronavirus on immigrant farmworkers is available in an earlier blog post by KJ here.
Hunter Knapp is a 3L at the University of Colorado Law School and Vice-President of the Immigration Law and Policy Society.