Peasants in Reserve: Temporary West Indian Labor in the U.S. Farm Labor Market 1

In the past ten years, the British West Indies Temporary Alien Labor Program has received widespread judicial and legislative support and criticism. While sugar and apple producers who import West Indians argue that domestic labor is insufficient to harvest their crops, labor organizations and their supporters maintain that domestic labor is adequate. The resulting legal disputes focus primarily on the issue of whether or not West Indians are displacing U.S. workers or undermining wage rates and working conditions. This article examines the relationships among legal issues surrounding the program, the U.S. farm labor market, and the Jamaican peasantry. It argues that continued imports of foreign labor during times of high domestic unemployment, as well as the varied factors which underlie the continued willingness and ability of Jamaican peasant households to supply workers to U.S. producers, can be most clearly understood from an international and historical perspective, rather than focussing on the needs and problems of any one nation.