GioLucas,
I have a little experience with the program and it does have some of a "nationality" aspect to it. The labor department and homeland security have to approve participants, but also the US and the origin nation have to be in agreement to allow the transfer of labor force. The origin nation has to meet some expectations in security and control of participants. I am not sure of the others, but I know there are limited participation controls. And the home country has to have excess labor available and there is a program concern for health issues of some regions and the protection of the US labor force.
I cannot defend the flipant use of the "Mexican" term. So I will assume it was unintended. But the H2a seasonal worker program started, for the most part, dealing with the Californian need for a seasonal labor force and a desire to control the flow of workers from the south.
It has expanded into the midwest as the harvest crews are no longer able to recruit local young people, largely because of the migration of many from small town farming country to the metropolitan boom towns over the last 60 years ----- the same period when the number of farmers has moved from the millions to the hundreds of thousands.
It has now expanded onto grain farms, livestock farms, farm trucking and heavy equipment operation -------- that may sound a little bigger than it is, but has spread to many other "seasonal" locations. Citrus in Florida is another I can think of.
It is kind of interesting to Luis would refer to it as a status thing to be on that list, but there again that may have been what I heard not what he said. 🙂
