More NAWS Information

[Guest guest]

Everyone,

Here are three articles on the discontinuing of the NAWS that have come out. I have a copy of one below from the Wall Street Journal and links to two others. The information is basically the same in all of them, but I figured you all might find these interesting. If any of the links don't work or you have trouble viewing this please let me know.

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=529aaa03e3250dc3f19a7b9927519b25

http://news./news?tmpl=story & u=/ap/20050125/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/farm_workers_2

Josh Shepherd

Resource Center Manager

National Center for Farmworker Health

(512) 312-5463

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Labor Department Ends

Survey

Of Migrant Farm-Worker Status

By MIRIAM JORDAN

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

January 24, 2005; Page A4

The U.S.

Department of Labor has suspended the only national survey that

collects

detailed data on employment, health and living conditions of migrant

and

seasonal farm workers.

The move

has caused concern among some policy makers and scholars, who say the

survey

has documented the rapid growth of immigrant labor in the agriculture

industry.

Based on interviews with thousands of laborers, the National

Agricultural

Workers Survey gathered data that helped the federal government

allocate funds

to health, education and social programs in rural areas for nearly two

decades.

Among the

survey's key findings is that the U.S. is

increasingly dependent on illegal immigrants to harvest its crops. More

than

half of all crop workers in the country are illegal immigrants, up from

just

12% in 1990, according to the latest farm workers' survey. The

agricultural

industry employs about 2.5 million people, whose average annual family

income

is $10,000 to $12,000.

With

immigration such a hot-button issue, some agricultural scholars saw

political

overtones in the decision. "If somebody doesn't like that result, one

way

not to show it is by canceling the survey," said Phil , professor

of

agricultural economics at the University of California, .

(In related news1, a

federal-court jury in Fresno on

Friday found a large agricultural company liable for sexual harassment

and

awarded a female fieldworker nearly $1 million.)

The farm

worker survey was an outgrowth of the Immigration Reform and Control

Act of

1986 that legalized three million illegal immigrants, including farm

workers.

It was created to monitor farm-labor supply in response to concern in

the

agricultural industry that the amnesty might create a shortage of

workers

because legal immigrants might seek higher-paying jobs in other sectors.

A

representative for the Department of Labor said the survey had been

suspended

because the congressional mandate to conduct it had expired in 1993 and

that

the data were mainly benefiting other government departments or

agencies, such

as Health and Human Services and Education. Stidvent,

assistant

secretary for policy at the Department of Labor, added that

"transferring

[the survey] to another agency that uses the data to a greater extent

is an

option we will explore."

The

survey cost the Department of Labor about $2 million a year, according

to

people close to Aguirre International, a Burlingame, Calif., firm

that conducted it and that received a notice to suspend the survey

about a week

ago.

Until

introduction of the survey, relatively little was known about the

farm-worker

population of the U.S.,

agriculture researchers say. Surveyors are deployed into the fields

three times

a year to track wages, migration patterns, English fluency and housing,

among

other things. The federal government, which spends nearly $1 billion

each year

in programs for migrant workers, uses the data to decide how to

allocate funds to

schools, clinics and nonprofit groups in rural areas.

"Twenty

years ago, pathetically little was known about farm workers in the U.S.,"

said Rob , executive director of Florida Legal Services, a

public-interest law firm. At a time when new immigration laws are being

debated, "the survey could help see the impact of new policies on the

agricultural workplace," Mr. said.

Write to Miriam

Jordan at miriam.jordan@...3

URL for this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110652264955033616,00.html

Hyperlinks in this

Article:

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110652384609833649,00.html

(2) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110652384609833649,00.html

(3) mailto:miriam.jordan@...