LEXINGTON, Ky.  — It may be winter, but farmers are in the middle of getting ready for spring planting – including completing contracts that will provide them a legal labor force.

That has not been an easy task over the last few years as state and federal immigration laws have changed, along with regulations overseeing the use of immigrant workers. Rick Alexander, executive director of the Agriculture Workforce Management Assoc. (AWMA), said this season will see a change as well.

AWMA is an agency “owned and managed by agricultural employers” that helps those employers apply for a migrant labor force through the federal H-2A guest worker program.

“The only change for this year is (something) called staggered start dates. In the past you’ve been able to write one contract; if you wanted to bring in workers at different times throughout the year, you’d write one contract and bring them in at different times,” he said. “The Department of Labor (DOL) is taking a position that you can’t do that anymore. For every different date you bring workers in, you have to write another contract.”

Alexander noted this process will add costs and said is not a positive thing. “The interesting part of this is, it was not a regulation change, it was not a rule change, it was an interpretation. The DOL put this out on a FAQ (frequently asked questions) on their website; that’s how they put this out.”

Even though this is the only change in federal regulations, immigration laws in several states have changed, creating shortages of workers and making the labor situation tougher than normal.

Alexander, whose agency helps farmers in Kentucky and Tennessee steer through government red tape, said he doesn’t see any new legislation, including the proposed H2C program, going anywhere and even if it did, it would not affect contracts for this year. In fact, AWMA has helped write many contracts already, since the paperwork has to be completed 75 days before the date in which the workers are needed.

Another reason a new system would not be implemented right away, should it pass, is the proposed change in the federal agency that would oversee the program. Some of the new legislation would transfer the regulatory power to the USDA.

“That’s probably more than a one-year process to change that over because the USDA doesn’t have any infrastructure to do this,” Alexander said.

He doesn’t know if the USDA could do better, but said most people feel any agency would be better than the DOL. “Everybody is just so frustrated with the DOL and the whole process,” he said.

The H2C program is part of the American Specialty Agriculture Act, which was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas). Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) also introduced similar legislation, the Legal Agricultural Workforce Act.

Both pieces have been criticized by some farm labor organizations, including Farmworker Justice, which supports yet another proposal known as the Agricultural Labor Market Reform Act of 2011 introduced by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.). All the bills have been referred to committees.

Despite the one change in the H-2A system, Alexander said so far, farmers have been signing up without too much opposition.

“They don’t like it, but they’re doing it. The ag economy has been pretty good so they are taking this pretty well, really,” he said. “Several new people have talked to us that have never been in the program before.”

Good or bad, right now the H-2A program is the only way to get legal immigrant help for farm labor needs, added Alexander. But he would like to see something consistent that wouldn’t change every year.

With 2012 being an election year, the issue of farm labor is likely to come up again and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen, especially if a new administration is elected. For more information about AWMA, go to www.awmalabor.com