H.R. 6847 — Fair Wages for Farmworkers Act

This section directs the Secretary of Labor to use state occupational employment and wage estimates from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate the adverse effect wage rate for H-2A nonimmigrants (i.e., temporary agricultural workers). (As background, the adverse effect wage rate, specified in regulations at 20 CFR 655.1308, is the minimum wage that H-2A employers must pay nonimmigrant workers to protect U.S. workers from wage depression.)

This section revises the processing of H-2A petitions (i.e., petitions to import temporary agricultural workers) by (1) transferring petition approval authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security (from the Attorney General), and (2) authorizing the Secretary of Homeland Security to begin processing such petitions while the Secretary of Labor processes the required labor certification that sufficient U.S. workers are unavailable and employment of H-2A workers will not adversely affect U.S. workers' wages and conditions. (Thus, the change enables concurrent processing to potentially expedite H-2A worker admissions.)