A federal Judge in Kentucky Rejected expanded protections enacted by the Biden-Harris administration for foreign farm workers coming to the U.S. under H-2A visas.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves, along with Kentucky farmers and Republican attorneys general in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, approved the injunction. And Alabama who argued that the new rules were designed to give foreign farmworkers collective bargaining rights. Congress, not the Biden-Harris administration, should decide whether to allow H-2A visa holders the right to unionize, Reeves said.
The new rules, enacted by the U.S. Department of Labor in April, expand protections for H-2A visa holders, including requiring employers to ensure that they are engaged in “self-employment activities.” Foreigners will not intimidate, intimidate or discriminate against farm workers. and “joint activities for the purpose of mutually supporting or protecting remunerative working conditions.”
Judge Reeves wrote, “Perhaps its most explicit authority, the final rule seeks to provide H-2A workers with many rights not previously enjoyed through its worker voice and empowerment provisions. were.” “DOL justifies the regulatory expansion of this effort as an effort to prevent alleged ‘unfair treatment’ of H-2A workers by employers in order to protect similarly situated U.S. workers.”
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Temporary agricultural workers with H-2A work visas line up to cross the San Ysidro Port of Entry on their way to seasonal jobs in the United States on March 22, 2022 in Tijuana, Mexico. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“The final rule does not so stealthily create fundamental collective bargaining rights for H-2A agricultural workers through ‘prohibitions,'” Reeves wrote. “By crafting these provisions as a mere extension of retaliatory policies, the DOL seeks to grant fundamental rights to H-2A workers without Congressional authorization.”
Under a preliminary injunction issued by the Federal Judge in Georgiathe new rules were already blocked in 17 states. The Reeves decision does not apply nationwide.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman speaks during the Fancy Farm Picnic on August 5, 2023 in Fancy Farm, Kentucky. (Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
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Congress created the H-2A temporary agricultural visa program through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, allowing employers to hire. Foreign farm workers On a temporary, seasonal basis, when there is a shortage of US workers to fill needed positions. It includes protections for U.S. workers, including setting a minimum wage rate for foreign workers under the program.
A barn and piles of rocks outside the Horse District of Lexington, Kentucky. (Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman argued that the Biden-Harris administration’s rules “cause serious and irreversible harm to farmers who are just trying to grow and put food on Kentucky’s dinner tables.”
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“We should be working to help Kentucky farmers, not put them out of business. This illegal and unnecessary rule by the Biden-Harris administration would have made it harder to get farmers’ products onto grocery store shelves and Prices would have already gone up more,” Coleman said in a statement. “We will continue to do what is right to stand up for Kentucky farmers.”