In America's 'salad bowl,' farmers invest in guest worker housing, hoping to stabilize workforce

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In America's 'salad bowl,' farmers invest in guest worker housing, hoping to stabilize workforce

SALINAS, Calif. — Every year, farmers in this fertile valley dubbed the “salad bowl of the world” rely on tens of thousands of workers to harvest leafy greens and juicy strawberries. But with local farmworkers aging — and the Trump administration’s determined crackdown on the illegal workers who have long been the backbone of California’s agricultural workforce — more growers have been looking to legal channels to import foreign workers.Under the federal H-2A visa program, agricultural employers can hire workers from other countries on a temporary basis, so long as they show that they were unable to hire sufficient numbers of domestic ..