Expanding the Field of View: The Role of Agricultural Employers in Street-Level Immigration Policy Implementation

• Author: Elizabeth Nisbet
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399715598339
• Date: 01 September 2018
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

2018, Vol. 50(8) 1097 –1124

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DOI: 10.1177/0095399715598339

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Article

Expanding the Field

of View: The Role of

Agricultural Employers in

Street-Level Immigration

Policy Implementation

Elizabeth Nisbet1

Abstract

More than half the U.S. farm labor force is undocumented, and thousands of

U.S. employers hire farmworkers through the short-term H-2A visa program.

Immigration enforcement and H-2A policy thus have an important role in farm

labor markets, but its nature depends on street-level policy implementation

dynamics. An interview-based case study in New York State extended

literature on street-level bureaucrats by broadening the focus to actors

outside government in the context of labor markets. The research specifies

employer roles in policy implementation as beneficiaries of policy, de facto

policy implementers, and citizens reacting to or attempting to influence policy.

Keywords

policy implementation, labor policy, immigration policy

Introduction: From Street to Field

Farm work conditions and employment practices evolve in the context of a

complex policy framework. Although policy shapes employment across

1John Jay College, The City University of New York, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Elizabeth Nisbet, Assistant Professor, Department of Public Management, John Jay College of

Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 524 West 59th Street, Room 3516 North

Hall, New York, NY 10019, USA.

Email: enisbet@jjay.cuny.edu

598339AASXXX10.1177/0095399715598339Administration & SocietyNisbet

research-article2015

1098 Administration & Society 50(8)

sectors, there is a particularly prominent history of government involvement

in the agricultural sector that includes efforts to help employers secure a steady

labor supply (Hahamovitch, 1997; Wells, 1996). A contemporary form of

intervention in farm labor markets is the U.S. government’s H-2A program

that provides visas for short-term seasonal agricultural guestworkers. Given a

sharp rise in the number of H-2A visas issued in the aughts,1 and the majority-

undocumented non-H-2A farm labor force (Nisbet, 2011), both guestworker

policy and immigration enforcement policy are important factors shaping sup-

ply and demand for farm labor.

Partly because their workforces can be depleted, and harvests disrupted,

by immigration enforcement actions, American farmers and associations that

represent them have described H-2A as necessary to supply labor for jobs

employers “can’t get any Americans to do” (“Immigration Reform Failing,”

2007). Although active lobbying occurs at the federal level related to both

immigration enforcement or control and H-2A visa policy, the nature of these

policies’ influence is partially determined at the “street level,” where day-to-

day decisions of different labor market actors are made partially in response

to the framework of policy (Rubery, 2005) and are intertwined with the pol-

icy implementation process. Lipsky’s (1980/2010) research framework

examining street-level bureaucrat roles in implementation, applied to studies

of service delivery, policing, economic development, and other kinds of pol-

icy, has been utilized less to study policy that influences labor market activity.

Employers take cues from an existing policy context or regulatory environ-

ment to make decisions about hiring and setting work conditions. As policy

is implemented in specific occupational and geographic labor markets,

employers may have opportunities to mediate policy. As employers gain

experience with H-2A rules and immigration enforcement actions unfolding

on the ground, they may adapt employment strategies, thereby contributing

to changes in how policy influences labor markets. Bureaucrats and employ-

ers, as well as labor market intermediaries and workers, interact as part of

street-level policy dynamics.

This article draws from a case study of farm regions in New York State to

describe how street-level implementation of immigration policy—both H-2A

and immigration control policy—shapes farm labor markets in the fresh fruit

and vegetable sub-sectors of agriculture. The study extends existing literature

by moving the context of research from government offices to agriculture

regions and broadening the focus to a wider range of actors, notably

employers.

Pressman and Wildavsky’s (1973) foundational research highlighted the

challenges of coordinating policy implementation across different sites,

agencies, and actors, which can negatively affect the achievement of policy