{"id":1210821,"date":"2023-09-13T08:46:18","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T08:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/09\/billionaires-farm-owners-bill-gates-workers-rights-wage-suppression-human-trafficking\/"},"modified":"2023-09-13T19:37:25","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T19:37:25","slug":"billionaires-are-using-an-abusive-farmworker-scam-to-rake-in-more-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/09\/13\/billionaires-are-using-an-abusive-farmworker-scam-to-rake-in-more-profits\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaires Are Using an Abusive Farmworker Scam to Rake in More Profits"},"content":{"rendered":"

To find low-wage workers for their agricultural investments, billionaires like Bill Gates are using an immigration program linked to labor abuses and human trafficking. The scam is a far cry from the program\u2019s supposed aim: helping struggling family farmers.<\/h3>\n\n
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\n Farmworkers labor in a strawberry field amid drought conditions on August 5, 2022, near Ventura, California. (Mario Tama \/ Getty Images)
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Billionaires who have been buying up farmland across the country are using a controversial immigration program linked to labor abuses and human trafficking to find low-wage workers for their agricultural investments.<\/p>\n

The visa program, which is allowing a growing number of employers to pay rock-bottom wages, has been at the heart of recent modern slavery cases \u2014 and one in three workers in the program say the arrangement has limited their ability to leave their jobs.<\/p>\n

While the industry claims the immigration program is necessary to help family farms find seasonal workers, companies affiliated with billionaires like Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Stan Kroenke, Philip Anschutz, and John Malone have used the H-2A visa program to staff their expanding agricultural holdings throughout the United States, according to records reviewed by the\u00a0Lever<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Records also reveal that one of the world\u2019s largest financial firms, Toronto-based Manulife, owns farm properties in Washington state that hosted H-2A workers. Manulife is among several major financial firms that have gained control of hundreds of thousands of acres of US farmland since the 1980s.<\/p>\n

The billionaires\u2019 farms and Manulife properties have only sponsored a few dozen workers at most each year via the H-2A program. But their use of the program demonstrates how some of the wealthiest people in the world are using the employer-sponsored visa system to exploit some of the poorest while putting downward pressure on wages \u2014 all in the name of helping struggling family farmers.<\/p>\n

The relatively small number of workers involved also understates the size of the billionaires\u2019 and financial firms\u2019 sprawling land portfolios, which rival the area of smaller US states in terms of acreage.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, some of these billionaire tycoons are connected to efforts to expand the exploitative visa program.<\/p>\n

Anschutz and Malone, both of whom are based in Colorado and own significant media assets,\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0right-wing<\/a>\u00a0think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, which have\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0reports<\/a> urging the US Department of Labor to relax H-2A program rules for growers. The Cato Institute, where Malone serves as a director emeritus, supports controversial H-2A reform legislation<\/a>\u00a0that would expand the scope of the program while\u00a0freezing<\/a> wages and implementing<\/a> immigration checks on farmworkers.<\/p>\n

While there has been\u00a0reporting<\/a> on former president Donald Trump\u2019s use of H-2A labor at his vineyard in Charlottesville, Virginia, none of these other billionaires or Manulife have ever been publicly associated with the controversial immigration program. In most cases, profit made from H-2A labor flows upward through opaque corporate networks and investment vehicles.<\/p>\n

Manulife, Cato, American Enterprise, and entities controlled by each of the billionaires did not respond to the\u00a0Lever<\/em>\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny talk of using H-2A labor is a bad thing,\u201d said Edgar Franks, political director for the Washington-based farmworker union Familias Unidas por La Justicia. \u201cIt gives way too much power to the employer. . . . We\u2019ve been involved in a lot of strikes where H-2A workers have been involved. We\u2019re really familiar with the ins and outs of the program and how exploitative it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re Completely Reliant on Their Employer\u201d<\/h2>\n

The H-2A visa program,\u00a0established in 1986<\/a>,\u00a0allows<\/a> US farm owners to sponsor temporary visas for foreign workers to do seasonal work. The initiative effectively succeeded the Bracero Program, a Mexican guest worker program, which lasted from 1942 to 1964, and is often cited<\/a>\u00a0by historians<\/a>\u00a0as an example<\/a> of the US government encouraging systemic racial discrimination and poor working conditions.<\/p>\n

Under the H-2A program, growers must demonstrate to the Labor Department that they\u00a0\u201canticipate a shortage<\/a> of domestic workers\u201d after unsuccessfully attempting to hire through state governments\u2019 workforce agencies. The growers then get certified by immigration authorities to sponsor H-2A visas. Guest workers, often recruited by contractors, apply for matching visas at US embassies and border crossings.<\/p>\n

About<\/a>\u00a090 percent<\/a> of all H-2A workers come from Mexico. Many live in rural poverty, and many are indigenous: in a 2019<\/a>\u00a0survey conducted by the migrant worker advocacy group Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, 19 percent of\u00a0 Mexican H-2A workers reported speaking a first language other than Spanish.<\/p>\n

Growers\u2019 participation in the program increased exponentially in the past two decades, as the political climate in the wake of 9\/11 led to crackdowns on employers\u2019 use of undocumented immigrants, many of whom work in US agriculture. The number of H-2A jobs certified by the Labor Department increased sixfold<\/a>\u00a0between 2005 and 2021, from about 50,000 to 317,000. Eighty percent of those certifications typically lead to job applicants getting visas. As of 2020, about\u00a0one in ten<\/a> US farmworkers are part of the H-2A program.<\/p>\n

While advocates say the program is crucial for small farmers facing staffing troubles, critics say it has enabled a powerful industry to suppress wages. Workers participating in the H-2A visa program are paid\u00a055 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the average wage received by other nonsupervisory workers in the United States, according to an analysis published by the Economic Policy Institute.<\/p>\n

One major challenge for H-2A workers is that their residency status is tied to a single employer. Bosses thus wield\u00a0staggering power<\/a>, worker advocates say, creating a culture of fear and silence.<\/p>\n

H-2A workers \u201coften live in squalid conditions, in rural areas without access to services,\u201d said Jim Knoepp, senior attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center\u2019s Immigrant Justice Project, which represents migrant workers in labor law litigation. \u201cThey\u2019re completely reliant on their employer for everything: getting to the store, cashing their paychecks, daily living expenses. It\u2019s not a great system for most of them.\u201d<\/p>\n