Leon Sequeira Quoted in Law360 and BNA's Daily Labor Report
"Farm Owners Tell Congress H-2A Visa Program Is 'Broken'"

Seyfarth Shaw Labor & Employment attorney and former assistant secretary of labor for policy at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Leon Sequeira, was quoted in Law360 and BNA's Daily Labor Report on September 13. Both articles discussed a recent hearing before the House Education and Workforce Committee's Subcommittee on Workforce Protection regarding the H-2A visa program, which allows foreign temporary agricultural workers to obtain visas.

In March 2010, the DOL rolled out a series of rules for the program, which included a requirement that employers must prove there are not enough U.S. workers available to perform the work, and employing foreign workers will not adversely affect those in the U.S. Since then, the number of denied petitions for visas has since been increasing, and employers claim that delays in processing of applications by the DOL has negatively affected the time-sensitive nature of harvesting work in the farming industry.

"Since the DOL issued new H-2A regulations last year, farmers have been trapped in a dysfunctional DOL bureaucracy that is unable or unwilling to make decisions in a timely manner," he said. "The current administration seems intent on driving farmers from the program rather than to the program."