Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
worksite, with workers who agree to cooperate, are administered by professional
staff members (bilingual, biliterate, and mostly bicultural). Three seasonal cycles
of interviews are conducted in each federal fiscal year (FY) to provide persons who
are employed in only part of each calendar year an opportunity to participate.
The most recently published report of the NAWS is based on findings from 6,472
interviews conducted during FY 2001 and FY 2002 (DOL, 2005).
The NAWS was not intended or designed to enumerate workers or to provide
quantitative reports of total hired crop-worker employment. Begun in 1988 by
DOL, it was a response to the congressional mandate of the Immigration Reform
and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). The specific purpose of the NAWS under the
IRCA mandate was to determine whether persons who were newly authorized for
employment in the United States under the seasonal agricultural worker (SAW) visa
program continued in farm work after their immigration status had been adjusted.
If it were determined that persons holding SAW visas were leaving seasonal crop
work and being replaced by unauthorized workers before federal FY 1992, a short-
age of legally eligible workers would be officially declared, and a new replenishment
agricultural worker (RAW) visa program would automatically be triggered. During
the first 3 years of NAWS surveys, it was determined that the “exit rate” of SAW-visa
holders from crop agriculture was negative, that is, more SAWs entered than left
agricultural crop work in the United States each year. As a consequence, the RAW
visa program was allowed to “sunset” because it was not needed.
The NAWS is an unusual survey in that it seeks to obtain detailed work and
family histories; information on workplace compliance with labor regulations;
current income, workplace and job conditions, and immigration status; and other
hard-to-obtain information. Such information has been regularly gathered from
NAWS participants in every federal fiscal year since the October 1988 start date.
Owing to budgetary and policy considerations, the number of interviews con-
ducted each year has varied considerably.
When combined with data from other sources, such as the Census of Agricul-
ture or the FLS, the NAWS has been effectively used to provide otherwise hard-
to-estimate numbers, such as estimates of the number of persons who qualify
for participation in federal programs intended to serve migrant farm laborers. In
addition, the NAWS conforms its sampling procedure to the same 18 USDA crop
regions as form the basis of the FLS (and in fact uses FLS data to assist in determin-
ing the proportion of interviews required in each crop region). As a result, data are
available for a few individual states, such as California, that are themselves distinct
crop regions.
The NIOSH AFF Program entered into an interagency agreement with DOL
to add an occupational safety and health supplement to the NAWS for federal FY
1999 (three NAWS interview cycles, starting in October 1998 and concluding in
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