The US farm workers coming from Guatemala – on a legal visa

Donald Trump is predicted to focus on undocumented immigrants, most of whom come from Central America, as quickly as he takes energy subsequent week. What’s lesser identified is that migrants from a number of the identical nations have a authorized path to work on American farms for a restricted time.

Farm labourer Sandra Noemi Bucu Saz is comfortable.

She’s just lately returned to Guatemala in Central America from the US, the place she was choosing strawberries in California.

“They paid us $19 (£15.60) an hour,” says Sandra. “We had been requested to choose seven bins per hour, and if we picked extra, then we bought paid a bit additional.

“It is so completely different to what I receives a commission in Guatemala, which is round $10 per day, when there’s work.”

Sandra is certainly one of round 5,000 Guatemalans who go and work – legally – within the US yearly, due to a US government visa scheme for short-term agriculture staff from abroad, referred to as H-2A.

This permits US farms that can’t discover sufficient locals to do the work to usher in workers from abroad. The international staff can keep for as much as 12 months, earlier than they then have to return to their residence nations.

For individuals like Sandra it is an opportunity to get on in life, and to assist her household by sending again a number of the cash she earns. In Guatemala there at the moment are round 30 recruitment firms which are registered with the Guatemalan authorities to assist individuals discover short-term work within the US by way of H-2A visas.

It is a chilly, gray, windy day in southern Guatemala as Sanda proudly reveals off the plot of land she rents in a spot referred to as Las Tres Cruces, excessive up within the hills close to a city the place she lives along with her household, referred to as Santiago Sacatepéquez.

She and her family develop corn, lettuce, beans and spinach for them to eat. And if there’s sufficient left over they promote them on the native market. Sandra’s dream is to avoid wasting sufficient cash to purchase some land, so they do not should hire.

However first she must repay the remainder of the debt that she bought herself in to after being scammed when she and her sister first tried to get a visa for the US.

“We paid somebody $2,000 per particular person as a result of we needed to get work within the US,” she says. “My sister and I believed we would have liked to do that so we might transfer ahead and make our desires come true. So, we bought a mortgage to get the cash, however sadly it was all a rip-off, and so they took our cash.”

That is frequent apply for fraudsters in Guatemala, who play with individuals’s desperation to get to the US, and trick them into handing over cash.

Cesia Ochoa is the chief director for the Guatemala department of a professional recruitment firm referred to as Cierto. A enterprise that additionally has places of work within the US and Mexico, it is among the 30 or so formally registered in Guatemala to supply H-2A visas.

“A part of our inspiration for opening an workplace in Guatemala was to assist locals keep away from the scams,” she says.

When Sandra went to the US by way of Cierto, she did not should pay it a charge. As a substitute, the corporate is paid by farm companies within the US searching for short-term staff.

Ms Ochoa explains: “For us, it is actually essential that we make a superb contact between companies and the employees, and that the salaries and contract they’re providing are actual.”

Whereas the H-2A visa permits individuals from Guatemala to legally discover short-term farm work within the US, there’s estimated to be greater than 675,000 undocumented Guatemalans within the US, according to the Pew Research Center think tank.

And an additional 200,000 had been discovered to have tried to enter the US with out legitimate documentation within the 12 months to September of final yr. That’s the third highest quantity behind Mexicans and Venezuelans.

Olga Romero lives close to a city referred to as Olopa within the north-east of Guatemala. She has seven youngsters, two of whom are working within the US with none visas.

“This can be a poor area the place work is tough to seek out, and households usually pay somebody referred to as a coyote between $2,000 and $3,000 to take them to the US illegally,” says Olga.

A giant downside is that to boost that sum of money many households have to take out loans secured towards the worth of their residence. They’ll then lose their properties if the cash is not paid again.

And that’s usually the case, provided that the prospect of them making it to the US is much from assured, with the chance of accidents alongside the best way, or being turned again on the US border.

However the rewards are excessive. The cash family members ship again from the US is named remittances, and these are propping up Guatemala’s financial system. In 2023 the nation acquired $19.8bn in whole remittances from overseas, according to one study from the Inter-American Development Bank.

President Donald Trump has vowed to get robust on undocumented immigrants, and is threatening to hold out mass deportations .

However it isn’t but clear if he’ll make strikes to restrict, and even cease, H-2A and the opposite visa schemes for short-term international staff.

Vanessa García, government director of recruitment organisation Juan Francisco Garcia Comparini Basis, is optimistic that such visas will proceed.

The muse helps ship round 200 Guatemalans a yr to work within the US with H-2A visas. These are farm labourers who assist to reap lettuces, cauliflowers, spinach and beans.

“I feel that the alternatives for Guatemalans to get an H-2A visa will proceed and even perhaps develop,” she says. “I’m not fearful, and I feel it is a nice alternative for staff.”

Joe Martinez, the US-based founder and CEO of Cierto, says that whereas he expects the visa scheme to proceed beneath Trump, rights for the international staff is likely to be weakened.

“Cierto is anxious that the push to streamline and cut back bureaucratic processes might result in a program with much less employee protections and fewer oversight.”

He’s fearful that wages might fall for the farmworkers, and that their housing circumstances on US farms could worsen.

Again in Guatemala, Héctor Benjamín Xoc Xar, says he has achieved two working journeys to the US by way of the H-2A visa. The newest one noticed him working in a greenhouse rising greens. He says his inspiration is his household.

“I would like them to do higher than me academically,” he says. “I left faculty after I was nonetheless younger to work within the fields.

“Earlier than I bought this work it appeared like my daughter wasn’t going to have the ability to end her closing yr learning accountancy as a result of we could not afford it, however now I’ve managed to pay for her and she or he’s working as an accountant.”