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East Oregonian
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Guestworker minimum wage needlessly costs farmers
A
small facet of a once lit-
tle-known federal program
now poses a big threat to
many farmers and orchardists across
the nation.
The H-2A visa program has
for years been used by farms and
orchards to obtain adequate numbers
of farmworkers for harvest, pruning
trees and other chores. The visa allows
farmers to hire temporary foreign
guestworkers.
To do that, farmers have to scale a
mountain of paperwork, advertise the
job openings, pay for transportation to
and from the workers’ home country
and provide housing for them while
they are on the job.
The use of H-2A workers has
grown exponentially as the supply of
domestic workers has dropped, mainly
because they are finding jobs in other
industries. The number of H-2A
guestworkers has grown from 5,318 in
1990 to 242,762 in 2018.
The reason: Farmers cannot find
enough domestic workers. They
advertise the jobs, but the number of
U.S. citizens who are willing and able
to work is inadequate. As the North-
west tree fruit industry continues to
grow the labor shortage has become
even more critical.
Foreign guestworkers appreciate the
EO Media Group file photo
H-2A guestworkers from Mexico pick late blossoms off apple trees in Washington state. A
federal government-imposed minimum wage threatens the viability of some farmers who
hire foreign guestworkers.
opportunity to work in the U.S. They
make many times more than they
would make in their home country.
For example, a field worker in Mexico
makes about $10.50 a day. The same
worker made at least $14.12 an hour in
Washington state last year.
By and large, the H-2A program
has allowed many farmers to continue
when the lack of domestic workers
would have otherwise crippled them.
YOUR VIEWS
Pendleton grateful for
flood responders
On Thursday, water from McKay
Reservoir was discharged at a rate
that was barely contained by McKay
Creek inside the Pendleton city lim-
its. When the Bureau of Reclama-
tion announced it was going to have
increase the outflow from the res-
ervoir because of safety concerns,
the county and city began to staff
the Emergency Operations Center
to prepare for flooding. On Friday,
the outflow from McKay Reservoir
was indeed increased and flood-
ing occurred in southwest Pendleton
along McKay Creek. The response
from the county and city was
immediate.
Assistance was requested from
additional agencies. Public works per-
sonnel from both the city and county
were mobilized and they began dis-
tributing sand bags and gravel to fill
them. Police and the sheriff’s depart-
ment patrolled the areas that were
flooding and warned residents about
the danger. Plans were put in place to
house anyone who needed to evac-
uate. Heavy equipment was staged.
The National Weather service pro-
vided a representative to the EOC
and by Sunday the Green Team from
the State Fire Marshal’s Association
arrived to begin taking over as inci-
dent commanders. Team Rubicon, a
national group of trained and experi-
enced volunteers arrived to help with
damage assessment. Steps are being
taken to ask the governor to declare
an emergency and also request federal
help from FEMA, including funding.
Of particular note are the actions
of hundreds of volunteers. Most of
them came from Pendleton, but I
have heard of volunteers from all
over the county. At one time, about
300 of them were filling sand bags.
Sports teams arrived and Pendleton
businesses sent their staff members
out to the flood zone to help. Food
and beverages were donated by local
establishments.
As mayor of Pendleton, and on
behalf of myself and county commis-
sioner George Murdock, I want to
express my admiration for the profes-
sionalism, initiative, and energy dis-
played by city and county employees,
many who got by on three hours of
OTHER VIEWS
sleep each day of the emergency. We
should also be grateful for the expert
response from state and federal agen-
cies. The tremendous volunteer
response reminds me that we enjoy a
superior quality of life in Pendleton
because so many of our citizens are
willing to give up their time to help
others in need.
A public meeting to discuss the
emergency will be held on Wednes-
day night at Sherwood Heights Ele-
mentary School at 6 p.m. in the gym-
nasium. Information will be provided
about the water levels projected to
flow in McKay Creek, the remain-
ing response efforts, and the com-
ing recovery phase. A question and
answer period will take place.
John Turner
Mayor of Pendleton
Outlawing guns won’t
stop suicides
I am a senior at Weston-McEwen
High School. I read your article “How
to Fight Suicide,” written by David
Brooks. I appreciate your willingness
to educate others about how to help
those who are thinking about com-
mitting suicide. It never crossed my
mind that there are certain phrases
that wouldn’t be good to tell some-
one going through this. I myself have
learned how to better help those who
are fighting this darkness.
However, I do not agree that guns
are part of the problem. According to
The Medical Science Monitor: Inter-
national Medical Journal of Experi-
mental and Research, guns don’t even
make the top four of prevalent ways
people commit suicide. If we were
to outlaw guns, it wouldn’t stop sui-
cide. It is ignorant comments like this
that misdirect the attention away from
mental health.
People who are at their lowest are
still people and if they are determined
to kill themselves, they will find a
tool to do the job. The fact that there
is a gun available is not the issue; the
fact that they are alone is. If we are to
truly effect change, we need to stop
making people afraid to seek help by
making them feel that they will lose
constitutional rights as if somehow
they are less.
Alexis Verkist
Weston
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of
the East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
A single aspect of the H-2A pro-
gram, however, threatens to destroy it
and the farmers who use it.
The adverse effect wage rate —
known as AEWR — it is the mini-
mum wage the federal Department of
Labor sets for H-2A workers in each
state. Farmers must pay all of their
workers the artificially high AEWR
wage.
The problem is H-2A workers don’t
adversely affect domestic farmwork-
ers, who are in short supply anyway.
But it does hurt farmers, who are
stuck paying their employees more
than the market would otherwise
dictate.
Just this year, the Department of
Labor increased the H-2A minimum
wage 22.8% in Nevada, Utah and Col-
orado; 15.9% in Idaho, Montana and
Wyoming: and 14.7% in Arizona and
New Mexico.
The AEWR is set to increase 6.4%,
to $15.03 a hour in Oregon and Wash-
ington — far above the state min-
imum wages of $11.25 and $12,
respectively.
Compared to the rate of inflation,
2.8%, the AEWR is indefensible and
unaffordable, agricultural groups
argue.
They are correct. An artificially
high wage only puts farmers at risk.
A federal judge recently cited a
technicality to rule against farmers
who had challenged the AEWR and
how it’s set. He found that the lawsuit
was beyond the statute of limitations
for challenging the rule.
The Department of Labor would do
well to rewrite that rule so the AEWR
matches a state’s minimum wage.
That’s the only fair way to set a
minimum wage in each state.
From the ashes of Notre Dame
first draft of this col-
umn was written
before flames engulfed
the Cathedral of Notre-Dame
de Paris, before its spire fell in
one of the most dreadful live
images since Sept. 11, 2001,
before a blazing fire went fur-
ther than any of France’s anti-
clerical revolutionaries ever
dared.
My original subject was the
latest controversy in Catholi-
cism’s now-years-long Lent, in
which conflicts over theology
and sex abuse have merged
into one festering, suppurating
mess. The instigator of contro-
versy, this time, was the for-
mer pope, Benedict XVI, 92,
who late last week surprised
the Catholic intelligentsia with
a 6,000-word reflection on the
sex abuse crisis.
Portions
of the doc-
ument were
edifying,
but there
was little
edifying in
its recep-
tion. It was
R oss
passed first
D outhat
to conser-
COMMENT
vative Cath-
olic out-
lets, whose palpable Benedict
nostalgia was soon matched
by fierce criticism from Fran-
cis partisans, plus sneers from
the secular press at the retired
pope’s insistence that the sex
abuse epidemic was linked to
the cultural revolution of the
1960s and the 1970s.
The column I was writ-
ing before the fire was mostly
a lament for what the docu-
ment’s reception betokened: A
general inability, Catholic and
secular, to recognize that both
the “conservative” and “lib-
eral” accounts of the sex abuse
crisis are partially correct, that
the spirits of liberation and
clericalism each contributed
their part, that the abuse prob-
lem dramatically worsened
during the sexual revolution
A
even as it also had roots in pat-
terns of clerical chauvinism,
hierarchical arrogance, institu-
tional self-protection.
So the column was a
defense of Benedict’s argu-
ment, in part, against secu-
lar sneers and liberal-Catholic
sniping. But then it also agreed
with certain criticisms of his
letter, and worried about the
ways that such an interven-
tion contributes to the sense
of a church in pieces, a church
almost with two popes, each
offering partial diagnoses to
their respective factions.
That’s where I was before
the fire began in Paris. But
now let me try to say some-
thing larger, something com-
mensurate to the symbolism of
one of Catholicism’s greatest
monuments burning on Holy
Week, on the day after Cath-
olics listened to a gospel in
which the veil of the temple
was rent from top to bottom.
That larger thing is this:
It is simply the problem of
Roman Catholicism in this age
— an age in which the church
mirrors the polarization of
Western culture, rather than
offering an integrated alter-
native. The church has always
depended on synthesis and
integration. That has been part
of its genius, a reason for all its
unexpected resurrections and
regenerations. Faith and rea-
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phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published.
son, Athens and Jerusalem, the
aesthetic and the ascetic, the
mystical and the philosophical
— even the crucifix itself, two
infinite lines converging and
combining.
Notre-Dame de Paris is a
monument to a triumphant
moment of Catholic synthe-
sis — the culture of the high
Middle Ages, a renaissance
before the Renaissance, at
once Roman and Germanic but
both transformed by Christi-
anity, a new hybrid civilization
embodied in the cathedral.
The Catholicism of today
builds nothing so gorgeous as
Notre-Dame in part because it
has no 21st-century version of
that grand synthesis to offer.
The cathedral will be
rebuilt; the cross and altar
and much of the interior sur-
vived. But the real challenge
for Catholics, in this age of
general post-Christian cultural
exhaustion, is to look at what
our ancestors did and imag-
ine what it would mean to do
that again, to build anew, to
leave something behind that
could stand a thousand years
and still have men and women
singing “Salve Regina” outside
its cruciform walls, as Pari-
sians did Monday night while
Notre-Dame burned.
———
Ross Douthat is a columnist
for the New York Times.
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eastoregonian.com.