Adding new fuel to the growing fire over farm labor reform, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in September describing the H-2A program as time-consuming, complex, and challenging. While there are an estimated 1.5 to 1.75 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the United States each year, H-2A supplied its greatest number of workers in 2008—about 64,000—and despite efforts to improve its processes, mustered only 55,000 in 2011. The vast majority of H-2A workers come from Mexico, and nearly half of those are processed through the Monterrey consulate in Mexico. There, they are fingerprinted and photographed before the Department […]