The United State’s Labor Department has made several amendments to the laws formulated during the previous Bush administration. The Labor department has reversed some of the rules that concern how local farmers hire temporary workers outside the state or country to help them during harvest seasons.

According to the Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, the amendments made reflects the new administration’s interest in providing strong labor protections and fair wages to the “most vulnerable groups of workers.”

The new set of regulations imposed by the Labor department provides an increase in wages as well as provides the thousands of foreign farm workers greater protection. The Labor department also requires the growers to prioritize the hiring of domestic workers.

However, most of the country’s farm owners have opposed to the amendments made to the H-2A guest worker program. According to these farmers, the new set of regulations makes it harder and more costly to hire foreign workers for several physically grueling tasks that most Americans wouldn’t apply for. On the other hand, the immigrant and labor groups have agreed to the changes saying that the regulations from the previous Bush administration had cut off farm wages and made it harder for several domestic workers to get hired on such jobs.

The Obama administration have found it necessary to increase wages as well as to raise the job safety protections for the temporary farm workers as, over the recent years, the number of foreign workers who have been hired to do grueling farm work has swelled.

The new set of regulations will be imposed starting March 15, 2010. The average wage for temporary farm workers will increase by about a dollar per hour. The new regulations will also require each farm owner to post available farm jobs on the new electronic job registry. This will ensure the hiring of more domestic workers.