The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Public Law 99-603 (commonly referred to as IRCA), contained provisions having the intent of changing the supply and demand for hired labor on U.S. farms. The legislation defined a new class of farm work called seasonal agricultural services (SAS) which covers most of the farm work in producing and harvesting perishable crops, and a new class of alien workers called SAWs. Because newly legalized special agricultural workers (SAWs) might leave seasonal agricultural services for other U.S. jobs, IRCA contained a provision for replenishing SA Ws. Replenishment with alien workers was permitted if a stated set of conditions was met. In IRCA, the worker shortage calculation was legislated to be a joint venture between the numbers derived by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Labor (USDL). The Census Bureau (CB) was to assist in providing some of the needed data. The SAS worker shortage has in fact been negative for each of the calculations. Thus, no RAW worker has been admitted to the United States. The SAS worker shortage calculations come to an end in fiscal 1992, unless new legislation is enacted.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a report or assessment of the SAS labor shortage or the number of replenishment agricultural workers (RAWs) needed. The contract indicated that particular attention should be given to ( L) determining whether or not an agricultural labor shortage exists and the adequacy and reliability of the data available to each of the three agencies involved in malting the calculation, (2) an assessment of the data needed to make an accurate determination of a labor shortage for the nation and up to ten regions, and (3) an assessment of the potential for determining from available data the total number of workers in seasonal agricultural services during a year and the number of such workers who are SAWs.