The death of two fellow farmers from complications of the virus — Earl Edwards of Jamaica and Juan Carlos Santiago Rincon of Mexico — and what he believed was the overall lack of safety precautions at Gebbers Farm persuaded William to leave the United States in August after only a couple of months. Normally, he would have stayed through to November. Instead, he asked his sister, Shellie-Ann Kerns, who lives five hours away on the small Bunkhouse Acres farm in the Middle Satsop Valley for help in purchasing an airplane ticket back home.
Launched in 1952 under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the H-2A program was meant to help solve what industry leaders described as a domestic labor shortage in agriculture. In Washington state, one of the nation’s top destinations for H-2A workers, growers requested more than 26,000 foreign workers last year. There were a number of growers, however, who canceled their contracts this year, in part due to concerns over the coronavirus and an inability to practice social distancing, resulting in almost 3,000 fewer worker applications, said Norma Chavez of the state Employment Security Department.
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