Hundreds of Mexican farm workers stranded at US border after massive computer glitch

Delay of farm hands has caused Washington cherries to spoil

(Phoebe Baker/Flickr)

A government computer glitch has stranded hundreds of Mexican farm workers at the US-Mexico border for two weeks, as officials are unable to issue work visas.

The glitch has prevented the workers from reaching the Washington state cherry farms that sponsored their visas, meaning cherry crops have been spoiling, Reuters reported. Many farms have reported losing their entire cherry crop.

A State Department database crashed on 9 June and since then US Customs and Border Protection has been able to process only about half of the requested work visas.

About 1,250 workers who had previously been granted the H-2A visas — issued for temporary farm employment — have been granted them again, but some 1,500 first-time applicants been stranded by the computer glitch.

Washington state is the largest US producer of sweet cherries and generated about $385 million in revenue in 2013, according to the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

“Cherries are timely; if you don’t get them in the 10- to 14-day window when they’re ready to harvest, they become mush,” said Roxana Macias, program manager a Washington labor group.

Dan Fazio, director of the labor group, said the government computer snafu has put a major dent in cherry production and likely will hurt blueberries, the next crop to ripen.

“I don’t know if this damages the entire Washington sweet cherry crop,” Mr Fazio told Reuters. “But I know that I have growers whose entire crop is wiped out.”

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