When H2A Grows in our Food System, Harm Grows in Our Communities

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Each August, we take action to honor the life of Farmworker Honesto Silva Ibarra, who died in 2017 after prolonged exposure to heat and wildfire smoke at Sarbanand Farms in Sumas Washington. This young father and farmworker was contracted in Mexico to work in the US through the H2-A visa program, which has limited rights for workers to advocate for safer working conditions. The number of imported H2-A visa Farmworkers in Skagit and Whatcom counties spiked in 2017, but declined after Ibarra’s death. 

Now the numbers are growing again, and we are seeing the cost. 

The “Contract”

The H2a visa labor structure was designed to be uneven. The economics of the US industrial food system have long been built on exploiting labor; the current H2-A visa is just the latest iteration. Under this program, workers recruited from Mexico to grow and harvest food for our communities do not share the same rights as US farmworkers.  

H2-A workers have fewer rights than migrant and domestic workers:: 

  • Worker’s visas are tied to a specific farm

  • Food, housing, healthcare and transportation are the employers responsibility 

  • They do not have the right to organize

Labor “Shortage”

Despite the dip after 2017, Whatcom and Skagit saw more than a 1000% increase in H2-A visa workers in the last 16 years. That is higher than both the state and national averages. Supporters of this program would tell you that this visa is filling a local labor shortage. This is not true, there is no labor shortage 

Our data tells a different story; local Farmworkers are being displaced. They are losing housing, wages, and the communities where they’ve put down roots. Local workers who apply as they always have, never hear back. 

Local Farms

We gathered on August 6 in Whatcom and Skagit County to honor Honesto Silva Ibarra, to warn our friends and neighbors that H2-A is an exploitative system, and address the farmers who are using this unjust program to grow their businesses. 

In Skagit County, we convened at Smith Garden, in Whatcom at Maberry Farm. Both of these places have the reputation of being small, family run farms just looking to get by. Both of these workplaces have displaced close to 300 workers whose families are now struggling to survive economically. H2-A is short term “solution” to a problem that doesn’t exist, and causes ripples of harm.

We Don’t Accept This

Industrial agriculture is teaming up with politicians to expand the H2A visa program nationwide, and add increased restrictions on the workers. It’s being positioned as an immigration reform when the reality is the opposite. But we can take action to stop it.

Stay up to date on the H2A Campaign here.

“Honesto Silva Ibarra Presente”

We do not have to accept additional deaths. A just food system is possible. We will continue to build toward it every day, and we urge you to join us