Whatcom County Department of Health-supported committee makes false accusations against local farmers that use heavily-regulated guest worker program to cope with worsening worker shortage
(BELLINGHAM, Wash.) Falsely claiming local farmers aren’t complying with state and federal laws, an official Whatcom County government committee, without evidence, told local lawmakers that area farms using the federal farm guestworker program are harming farmworkers.
The Whatcom County Food System Committee included the falsehoods in an annual report presented to the Whatcom County Council June 23, as the struggling committee pleads for county funding in the midst of a budget crisis.
Save Family Farming is calling on Whatcom County leaders to reject this report and reorganize this clearly activist-controlled committee, which currently receives county staff support from the Whatcom County Health Department.
“What this local government committee is claiming on the official record is not only patently false, it’s offensive to local farmers who work tirelessly to grow food while complying with an ever-growing list of pressures and regulations,” said Dillon Honcoop, Save Family Farming Communications Director.
Any farm using the guest worker program is required by law to prove that no qualified and available local workers are available to fill the jobs that guest workers are requested for. Farms and the state invest significant resources to advertise those job openings to U.S. workers, but due to the acute ongoing labor shortage, data shows only 11 domestic workers were hired for the over 35,000 farmworker job openings across the state last year, despite the extensive advertising.
Unbelievably, the county Food System Committee twisted that data in their official report to claim that the 11 local workers hired through the state’s program are evidence that farms are actually not complying with the federal rules that require any willing local workers to be hired before a farm is approved to hire foreign guest workers.
“While it’s no surprise this committee wants to create the perception of a problem in order to justify their request for county funding, the harm that these false narratives cause to the farming community couldn’t come at a worse time, with local farmers facing a growing viability crisis across Washington state,” said Honcoop.
Interestingly, the activist group Whatcom Food Network’s logo is on every page of the government committee’s official report, and discredited anti-farm activist Rosalinda Guillen serves as a co-director of that group. In the past, Guillen has falsely accused a local farm of “corporate murder,” among many other disproven claims attacking farms and the H-2A program.
Press Contact: Dillon Honcoop, dhoncoop@savefamilyfarming.org