The United Farm Workers strongly supports AB 1783 (Asm. Robert Rivas) – The Farm Worker Housing Act of 2019 — which encourages construction of housing for farm worker families, while prohibiting the use of state taxpayer funds or benefits for housing designed for employers to follow Trump Vineyards plan to hire more H-2A foreign workers.
Trump proposed new harmful rules making it easier to replace U.S. farm workers with more foreign workers, pay U.S. farm workers less and provide fewer protections for workers under the abusive H-2A program.
The proposed Trump rules financially benefit Trump personally since he uses H-2A workers on Trump Vineyards.
AB 1783 prohibits state taxpayer dollars to go to the Federal H-2A visa program that gives employers full control over a guest farm worker’s life. In the Trump Administration, the Federal H-2A agricultural guest worker visa program is moving in the wrong direction. The H-2A program is known by some as “Harnessed-2 Abuse.” A farm worker with an H-2A visa is harnessed to a single employer where no family unity is allowed, the employer controls daily meals, the employer controls housing and transportation, the employer controls immigration status, and where women are discriminated against with over 95% of H-2A workers in California are men.
It is time to update California farm worker housing policy. There is a shortage of affordable, family housing for farm worker families. We don’t need to move backward with Trump – let’s move forward as California.