Florida and other states with dangerous levels of heat are requesting a lot more temporary migrant farmworkers, according to a report from the American Immigration Council.
They’re brought into the country on a temporary visa known as H-2A. So, the council used the H-2A application data from the U.S. Department of Labor to create a map showing the demand. It focused on the number of workers requested, not the amount that definitively came to work in the U.S.
Employers across the country — in states like California, Arizona, Texas and Florida — increased their request for foreign agricultural workers by 65% between 2017 and 2022.
Florida employers doubled their demand, growing from 25,000 workers to over 50,000.
"We saw a relationship between the counties that experience higher heat, in association with more applications for H-2A workers. And this is especially true in places like Florida, when we look at like Hillsborough County and Manatee County saw significant increases in the applications for H-2A workers,” said Steven Hubbard, the senior data scientist for the American Immigration Council.
"When we look at Florida in particular, we noticed that there was over 20% of workers worked in conditions where the heat was over 90 degrees or hotter, which produces illnesses. You get heatstroke, other signs of illnesses.”
He said employers are requesting more workers because of a labor shortage, which is affecting the nation in many industries, including agriculture. The highest increase in demand was in the fruit and vegetable sectors, but there was also growth across the agricultural board, including in apple orchards, and hog and cattle farming.
Hubbard pointed to age as also playing into the increase of foreign worker requests. Migrant workers are getting older on average by five years — from 37 years old in 2006 to 42 now.
“So, we're seeing less younger workers, and then more reliant on older workers. And hence, the H-2A program is needed to fill-in for those workers that are not coming into the field,” Hubbard said.
He said being older and working under hotter conditions is a bad combination.
“And as we experience more heat, because of climate change, we have to be discussing this in talking about agriculture and our workers: how do we solve some of this these problems of heat illness in agricultural workers?” Hubbard said.
As planet-warming fossil fuels continue to burn into the atmosphere by the transportation and energy sectors, Florida and other parts of the country continue to experience record-breaking heat and put into effect more and more heat advisories.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law this year preventing cities and counties from creating heat protections for outdoor workers.
Hubbard said he hopes the latest report spreads awareness about the importance of outdoor workers and the threats they face.
“I hope that the map is used to have a discussion, both nationally and then also most importantly, locally," Hubbard said. "That is one of the reasons why I parsed the data, both at the state level and then at the county level, is to have those discussions.”
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