The worst farmer in Iowa?
- Thread starter JEFF420
- Start date
There are a bunch of different H visa types. H2A specifically is for agricultural work when there aren’t enough US workers available. Thus the requirement for local job postings before being approved to sponsor the visa.
It’s not. Which makes me think the whole thing was illegal
Didn’t read it but did they take his farm from him? Hopefully they did. What a pos. Guessing he don’t celebrate Juneteenth
He has to pay a bunch of money per the article, and was sentenced to 188 months of federal prison (15 + years).
It said there is no parole in the federal system, which I hadn't heaard before?
Parole got nixed from the federal system in the 80s but you can still get time knocked off for good behavior.
demoncore1031
Well-Known Member
The fed system you have to serve most of your time also. It's not like you get 15 years and serve 3 for good behavior. You have to serve the whole thing. Maybe 90 percent?? Can't remember the exact percent you have to serve.
This sounds like the background of a Walker Texas Ranger villain.
I think you get 54 days knocked off for each year of good behavior.
Found it
In federal court you will have to serve 85% of your sentence if convicted of federal charges. Thus, if you are sentenced to 10 years in prison, you will actually serve 8.5 years in prison.
There is absolutely NO WAY this was done through the H2A program. Not possible. The amount of paperwork you have to do and the checks and balances are astronomical. He had to be doing this on his own accord. You aren't really saving any money hiring H2A workers, you are just getting skilled labor to fill roles that you can't find people to work. In fact, many H2A workers are actually making MORE than local hires.
yep, in the veggie business... these H2A workers are very skilled. some of them are on like their 25th year.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
I saw an article the other day about detasselling, that job that used to be a rite of passage for Iowa teens … now the big ag companies are bringing in foreign visa workers, providing the bare minimum in food, housing, and compensation, and treating them as “contractors” instead of employees.
They get around the “only if there’s not enough Americans to do the job” by including crazy requirements in the job postings, like having to prove five years of experience detasselling. Not many people have done that job for five years, and even fewer can prove it. I think the article said one job posting somewhere in Iowa got three applications. Three.
When I read the thread title I thought it was going to be about Ray Kinsella...
This is an area I have a ton of experience in with a bunch of different companies. The only company that I know of that has hired detasselers directly in the recent past is Pioneer. From the companies standpoint, it's much much easier to just sign a contract with a crew and have them do all the paperwork, handle payroll, etc. They operate as their own company and have the contacts to hire people of their choosing that their crew leaders are going to run. These H2A folks generally move around the US as a group throughout the year working with various crops and various companies, detasseling being one of them. Even the kid crews were on contract, not hired direct.
Also, there truly isn't enough Americans to do the job. The large seed corn companies generally raise seed in the same pockets throughout the country. York, NE. The Grundy Center/Marshalltown/Tama area in Iowa. Central IL SE of Peoria. Constantine, MI to name a few. You're talking thousands of detasselers in the big growing areas.
The other big factor is reliability. I had a kid crew a number of years ago that would hire like 30% more kids than they needed to start the year because history said that many would drop out in the first week. You deal with issues like half your crew not showing up because it's Sunday and it's raining. As a company, that can't happen when dealing with seed corn. On the flip side, you've got H2A crews that are highly tolerant to adverse weather conditions, especially heat. Crews that want to work as many hours as possible because it more money to send home. They are more efficient and do a much better job.
As far as working and living conditions, see my previous post about requirements and inspections. Minimum wage is 17.79 in Iowa but a lot of the crews I've worked with end up paying a little more than that to good employees and crew leaders for worker retention. They're staying in hotels or buildings that are inspected by the government to meet standards and those inspections are taken very seriously. Each person has to have their own bed. They must have a certain number of sinks and toilets based on crew size. Meals must be provided to crews living in hotels and speaking from experience, some of the best Mexican food you can get. The larger crews have kitchens and full time chefs.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
You make good points. I can see how it’s better for business and just for getting the job done to run detasseling this way. But my main point was the overly restrictive job postings intentionally designed to depress responses so the companies can say, “See, we can’t get any Americans to do this job, we have to turn to H2A workers.”
I’m also only going by the article where they talked to one of the visa workers who said he got just a sandwich to eat for the full day in the field, and some who were charged a laundry fee, cutting into the pay they were sending back home to support their families, when the company returned their clothes obviously unwashed. Are most H2A workers treated fairly? I’m sure they are. Are some companies taking advantage of the system and these workers? I’m sure that’s true, too.
I can definitely imagine there is a huge need for detassling. You can't screw around with unreliable labor. Organic farms are also a lot more labor intensive.
There's a big difference if you are running a business and your choice is H2A crews there to work vs. a bunch of HS kids looking for some extra cash, a lot of whom are also trying to do sports stuff that tend to all be 12 month activities nowadays. Not to mention there are some pretty cushy gigs out there for part-timers. My 16 year old does umpiring for kids tournaments and little league on weekends his HS team doesn't play. He can rake in $500 a weekend. Hard to make the case to go bust your ass detassling.
Were they paying those 14 year olds anything close to minimum wage? Feel like I had a bunch of friends who would do it and only pocket like 1500 bucks or something. Maybe the 2 hours on the bus each way wasn't paid but it seemed like they were gone a lot of hours over that like 3.5 week period
