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LABOR DEPARTMENT SURVEY SHOWS HALF OF ALL AGRICULTURAL WORKERS IN THE US WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION
A Labor Department survey taken during 1997 and 1998, the results of which were just released, revealed that more than half of the 2 to 2.5 million agricultural workers in the US are working without INS authorization.  This is a dramatic increase over the previous survey, released in 1989, when only 10 percent of the farmworkers in the country were undocumented.  
While the survey showed that the average wage was .18, a little more than in 1989, inflation has raised the cost of living by 11%, resulting in an overall decline in the buying power of farmworkers’ wages.  The Labor Department has used these figures to call for increases in the wages farmworkers receive, while agricultural employers are using them to call for changes in the guest worker program. 
While growers say the survey results show that there is a worker shortage, advocates for farmworkers make a different argument.  They say that if there were a worker shortage, wages would be rising, instead of in an effective decline. 
Regardless of the true meaning of the statistics, they will doubtless be used in efforts to change immigration laws as they relate to migrant farmworkers.  The Agricultural Employers Council, an industry group representing growers, is joining its efforts to those of the high-tech industry to pass what they call an “H-1B plus” bill.  They argue that if the booming economy and worker shortages are behind the reasoning of increasing the number of skilled temporary workers, the same reasoning should call for an increase in agricultural workers.