LEILA FADEL, HOST:
December and Christmas may be months away, but Christmas tree farmers are already hard at work preparing for the season. Thousands of seasonal workers from abroad arrive each year through a federal visa program called H-2A to help harvest everything from Christmas trees to cherries and cucumbers. The farmers who hire them want to lower the minimum wages they can pay seasonal workers set by the federal government. Michigan Public's Michelle Jokisch Polo reports.
MICHELLE JOKISCH POLO, BYLINE: It's been nearly two months since two dozen workers, most from Mexico, arrived to work at Michigan's Dutchman Tree Farms, the largest Christmas tree grower in the state. They've already planted almost 3 million seeds in the greenhouse.
SCOTT POWELL: So about one out of every 26 homes that has a real Christmas tree in the United States came from our farm.
JOKISCH POLO: That's Scott Powell. He's in charge of overseeing everything from Christmas tree seed selection and orchards, all the way to harvest, where he's seen a lot of changes in his region.
POWELL: Growing up, you know, 30 years ago, every single high school kid trimmed Christmas trees, and it's short-term.
JOKISCH POLO: Seasonal.
POWELL: It's seasonal, and it worked really good for a lot of farmers. We're not seeing that today.
JOKISCH POLO: Powell says local workers for agricultural jobs are scarce, so he relies on the federal H-2A visa program to bring in temporary foreign labor. He spends about $700 per worker to bring them to the United States. Add to that housing and hourly wage increases. In Michigan, the wage rate for H-2A visa workers is over $18 an hour, and it's jumped by nearly $3 an hour since 2022. And nationwide, the rates average around $20 per hour. Chuck Conner, president of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, says those costs are a big barrier for farmers like Powell.
CHUCK CONNER: The government sets minimum wages by which you have to pay these H-2A workers in order to bring them into your region. And those minimum wages are dramatically higher than what you know, regular wages for other workers would be here in the U.S.
JOKISCH POLO: For example, Michigan's minimum wage is about $12.50, and Conner says that's one reason why so many farmers hire immigrants who don't have legal status. Over the past several years, lawmakers have floated proposals aimed at reducing or freezing wages for H-2A workers, efforts that until recently have struggled to gain momentum. But that may be changing. In February, Michigan Republican Representative John Moolenaar introduced bipartisan legislation to temporarily freeze H-2A wage rates through the end of next year.
JOHN MOOLENAAR: This legislation would allow farmers to have a reliable and legal workforce, which is a win-win for those who grow our food and for those of us who want to keep the cost of groceries down.
JOKISCH POLO: Back at Dutchman Tree Farm, Jesus Estrada (ph) is busy at work prepping the fields for new growth. This is his fifth year returning to Michigan, where he works from March through December.
JESUS ESTRADA: (Speaking Spanish).
JOKISCH POLO: Estrada says back home in Mexico, he'd earned the equivalent of about $20 a day, roughly 400 pesos for field work. While he doesn't want to see wages go down, he says he'd still be willing to return, even at a minimum of $15 per hour. So for him, coming to the U.S. under a temporary work visa is, as he puts it, a no-brainer.
For NPR News, I'm Michelle Jokisch Polo in Grand Rapids. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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