WESTMINSTER, Vt.- Every spring for the past five years, Gerald Berry has traded his job in Jamaica for the farmland of Vermont where he picks vegetables up to 80 hours a week.
Berry likes the work and, when there is an opportunity to do more, he takes it.
"If he has more, you do more," Berry said while taking a break from watering plants at Harlow Farms in Westminster. "You don't want to leave. You come here to work."
Berry, 44, has a job in a security office back home in Clarendon, Jamaica but he said the pay is not enough to support his five children. He supplements that income with the $9.05 per hour he makes pulling weeds and harvesting vegetables with about 25 other workers at Harlow Farms.
Berry lives on the farm with seven other Jamaicans in a finished apartment on the barn's upper level, complete with a common area and kitchen facilities, decorated with pictures from back home.He gets along with Paul Harlow, the farm's owner, "150 percent excellent." But the downside is that Berry doesn't get to see his family for at least six months out of the year.
Berry is one of about 2,700 seasonal farm workers who come legally to New England from other countries each year to fill shortages in the domestic agricultural work force. Unlike the estimated 53 percent of farm workers who are undocumented, Berry is authorized to be here through the Department of Labor's H-2A program.
Established under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the H-2A program is the only legal means through which foreigners can find temporary farm employment in the U.S. About 45,000 seasonal foreign workers come through the program each year, making up just 2 percent of the total crop worker population in the U.S., according to the Labor Department.
Eight of the people Harlow employs between April and November come through the program. After proving he cannot find enough U.S. farm hands for those jobs, Harlow submits his paperwork and is allotted a number of workers. He pays their travel expenses and provides housing on his farm. The wage is set by the program and Harlow does not pay overtime.
The program, according to some farm employers advocates, is a bureaucratic nightmare. But Harlow said the red tape and expense farmers must incur does not compare to the headaches they would have without the workers.
"It's a substantial investment," Harlow said. "It's more costly than hiring (domestic workers), but they're dependable."
The U.S. workers he is able to find work hard, Harlow said, but scheduling can be an issue and when it is time to harvest a crop, he needs workers who can put in the extra hours. Many U.S. workers are college or high school students on break. Three months availability is not enough to keep the farm running through the growing season and would leave Harlow scrambling for help.
Falling even a day behind harvesting a quick growing crop like lettuce means thousands of dollars, Harlow said. Weekends off are not a luxury he can afford.
"If I didn't cut tomorrow, by Monday I'd easily lose $20,000 of lettuce," Harlow said one Friday afternoon in June.
The solution for most farmers has been foreign workers, legal or not. Among all crop workers in the United States between 2001-2002, 78 percent were born outside the country, according to the Labor Department's latest National Agricultural Workers Survey. Of those foreign born workers, just over half admitted to being here illegally.
The actual number is probably much higher, around 65-70 percent, and climbing fast, according to John Young, executive director of the New England Apple Council.
Young's organization helps New England growers use the H-2A program. Young said H-2A was established with good intentions to regulate foreign labor and protect US workers. But with strict wage and housing requirements, processing time and the paperwork involved, Young said the H-2A program is collapsing under its own weight.
"While the intent is very good, the system is not set up to handle getting (workers) here timely," Young said. "It's an attempt to be more careful about who gets here through H-2A, but because it takes so long people are saying 'To hell with it.'"
The program has even become a conduit for undocumented workers, Young said.
About 10 years ago, the Florida Department of Labor referred 125 Mexican and Central American workers to New England farms. They arrived in Hartford, Ct., with all the appropriate paperwork, complete with Social Security numbers and identification. Everything appeared to be valid. Then Young ran a check on the Social Security numbers for a random sample of 50 workers.
"Forty-nine of them came up as mismatches," Young said.
Every year after that, the number of illegal workers increased, Young said. Border patrol has been cracking down in Maine, he said, but has been less vigilant in other areas. Young estimates there are currently 5,000 undocumented farm workers in the Connecticut River Valley.
Ten years ago, the gateways for crossing the U.S. border were much wider. But post-9/11 concerns over terrorism have drawn attention back to farm labor and now, after more than 50 years, the H-2A program is facing significant reform.
"We've got an agriculture industry basically built on a house of cards with a huge illegal immigrant population," Jim Holt, a labor economist in Washington D.C., said.
Holt has been consulting with legislators on an agriculture jobs bill currently before the US Senate that seeks to curtail illegal foreign farm labor by streamlining H-2A. The bill proposes streamlining paperwork requirements and redefining labor standards to help farmers become more competitive.
Holt said the jobs bill gets rid of housing requirements that prove to be an excessive expense for many farmers. Currently, farmers must have enough rooms to house every foreign worker they hire through the H-2A program. Holt said such requirements are not needed, as many workers choose to live off the farm and find apartments in town.
"A lot of workers don't want to live on the job and they don't have to," Holt said. "Some farm workers go off the farm and yet the farmer still has to maintain enough housing for them."
Instead of requiring farm employers to maintain those rooms, the bill would have the employer give workers a housing stipend to live in an apartment or house off the farm. They would have to be in an area with sufficient housing to be allowed that option. Whether an area had sufficient housing would be left to the discretion of individual states, Holt said.
The way wages are calculated would also change. Currently, employers must pay a special minimum wage, called the "adverse effect wage rate," the federal or state minimum wage or the applicable prevailing hourly wage rate, whichever is higher.
Most often, the adverse rate is the highest. It is calculated using the average amount a farm worker earns, whether that means hoeing a field or working with plant tissue. The average can mean a much higher wage for workers who, like many in H-2A, perform low skilled work.
"It sets a wage that is not competitive," Holt said. "The only employers that can economically use it are in areas that are at or above the average."
The jobs bill would freeze the adverse effect wage rate for three years while Congress studies the issue. Farm employer advocates are hoping to replace it with the prevailing wage, which is an average taken from each specific job. The wage for someone operating a tractor, for example, would be the average of all tractor operators in that region. The prevailing wage rate would allow farmers to be more economically competitive with farmers who do not hire H-2A workers, Holt said.
Worker advocates disagree. Bruce Goldstein, co-executive director of the Farmworker Justice Fund, said Congress will likely discover the adverse effect wage is too low. The calculations are based on Department of Agriculture surveys that include undocumented workers.
"We all know undocumented workers are willing to work for less," Goldstein said. "Those wage rates are depressed by the presence of undocumented workers."
Goldstein said his organization supports the bill, however, recognizing that both employers and workers made concessions.
The bill reaches out to undocumented workers already inside the U.S. by offering them an opportunity to become legal citizens after three years. The hope is that the U.S. government will gain more control in tracking foreign farm workers.
The opposition to the bill has primarily come from anti-immigration groups like the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies, Goldstein said.
Although talk of reform has been going on for many years, both Goldstein and Holt are confident the legislation will pass this year.
Terrorism concerns have helped the bill gain broad bi-partisan support, Holt said. Forty-seven Senators have signed on with the bill's sponsor, Sen. Craig Larry (R-Idaho), to support the bill and Holt said Congress is starting to realize the immediacy of the issue.
"Every new entrant into the seasonal agricultural workforce is illegal," Holt said. "So it is necessary to address the issue now."
For farmers like Harlow, the reform could have some minimal impact. It might mean getting workers to arrive sooner and reduce his competitors' cost advantage, many of whom will be adjusting to bring undocumented workers into compliance.
But having seasonal workers like Gerald Berry on the farm have already been well worth the cost, Harlow said.
"They set the bar in terms of working," Harlow said. "They care as much as I do. They care about it because it's their job, their livelihood. They realize that I need to make money if they are going to have a job."
Although there may have been some initial cultural barriers to overcome, both Harlow and the Jamaican workers said they have gotten comfortable living together each season. They even celebrate Jamaica's Independence Day together in August, inviting friends and area residents to eat and party on the farm.
Because the H-2A program is so tightly controlled through Jamaica's central office, Young said, opportunities for workers to abuse the system are limited. Nor would they want to, workers say.
Berry said he likes coming to Harlow Farms but has no plans of becoming a permanent U.S. citizen. It is a way of supporting his family and continuing to do a job he genuinely enjoys.
The work is hard and Vermont may be far from home, but Berry said he has no intention of trying anything different.
"For me, as long as I have my health, the strength and Paul needs me, I'll be coming."