The Emergence of a Binational Mexico-US Workforce: Implications for Farm Labor Workforce Security.

The U.S. agricultural labor market is already, in many respects, a binational one, and it will become increasingly one in which workers who are born in Mexico will follow a variety of worklife trajectories that take them back and forth between both countries. Recognition of this reality has important implications for policy development and program planning. For example, improved research, program redesign, and innovation, coupled with a commitment to binational collaboration can give rise to more effective and cost-effective interventions that will improve the employment security and economic well-being of migrant and seasonal farm workers, especially teenage farm workers. Four broad areas of initiatives where action is needed as part of recognizing and responding to the current reality of a binational agricultural workforce can be recommended: immigrant policy, migrant education, farm worker employment training, and labor law enforcement. Several issues and options should be explored in order to improve transnational migrant teenagers' workforce security: (1) binational eligibility for unemployment insurance; (2) binational strategies to deter the employment of very young teenagers in the US farm labor force; (3) skills development programs to develop basic and transferrable skills for transnational migrant farm workers; (4) formation of a Binational Collaborative to inform transnational migrants about US labor law; and (5) education and employment training components in efforts to link remittances and public investment in rural development in migrant-sending areas. (Contains 31 footnotes.) (KC)