Dan Fazio says his phone is “ringing off the hook” these days.

He’s executive director of WAFLA, an organization that helps fruit growers in Washington state find workers — and specifically, foreign workers who are allowed to enter the U.S. specifically as seasonal workers on farms.

WAFLA takes care of the bureaucratic details. It applies for permission from the Department of Labor to bring in workers for specific jobs. It certifies that it has looked for U.S. citizens to do these jobs and can’t find them. Then it locates people in places like Mexico, or Central America. These “guest workers” get a special visa, called an H-2A visa, that lets them stay in the country temporarily, usually for no more than 10 months. WAFLA brings them by bus to the fields and orchards of Washington.

“This year, we’ll get labor certifications for over 10,000 workers,” Fazio says.

Interest in WAFLA’s services is surging for two different reasons. There’s a shortage of farm workers across the country. But more recently, it’s also been driven by fear of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“We haven’t seen any raids, but we have seen the paranoia,” says Fazio. “A government vehicle drives by a farm, and all the farm workers run away.”

The workers, many of whom are in the country without legal authorization, are worried about deportation. But farm employers are worried, too. Because if they lose their workers, they could also lose their harvest.

So they’re getting on the phone to Fazio, looking for workers who are here legally, and won’t run away.

Use of these H-2A visas has already been growing in recent years, because farmers are finding it hard to find enough workers.

Users of the program include tobacco and sweet potato growers in North Carolina, small organic farms in Pennsylvania, even the Trump Winery, in Virginia.

They’re turning to workers like Felipe Montan.

Montan’s home is in Veracruz, Mexico. That’s where I reached him, by phone. But he’ll soon leave his family there and get on a bus to North Carolina, to work in sweet potato fields. He’s been doing this for the past ten years. He’ll spend most of the year there.

The separation from his family is hard, Montan says, but there’s just not much work at home in Veracruz. He’s also moved to other parts of Mexico, for months at a time, to find work. But the work in North Carolina pays much more. “It has helped me to improve my house,” he says. “It has allowed me to pay for education for my kids. I have a daughter who’s in the university.”

The guest worker program has plenty of critics. The H-2A visa ties a worker to one employer. That can leave workers vulnerable to abuse or exploitation.

Montan says it’s generally worked out well for him. He gives a lot of credit to a union contract between a group of North Carolina growers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, which is part of the AFL-CIO. These are the only H-2A workers who are covered by a union contract.

In California, the country’s biggest agricultural state, guest workers are rare. Most farmers there have refused to use the H-2A program, due to the many regulations that come with it.

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Employer-provided housing near La Belle, Florida, for guest workers who harvest oranges and grapefruit.

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Dan Charles/NPR

Employers are required to provide free housing and transportation to workers. They also have to pay a wage that the government sets for each area. This year, in California, that minimum hourly wage is $12.57.

But some of those farmers now are so worried about immigration enforcement that they’re calling Jeanne Malitz, a lawyer in San Diego who specializes in guest worker applications. Malitz is hiring more people in her law firm to handle the workload.

“I don’t sleep very much these days!” she says.

I reached Malitz right after she finished talking to farmers in the town of San Luis Obisbo. “They want to know, what are all the rules? What do we do? Where are we going to get housing?” Malitz says.

Last year, nationwide, about 160,000 farm jobs were filled by guest workers. That comes to about 10 percent of all the jobs in fields and orchards, taking care of planting, pruning, and harvesting.

Malitz wouldn’t be surprised if that number doubled over the next five years.

In fact, she’s wondering if the Department of Labor will have enough people to handle all the applications that they’re about to receive.

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On a cold and windy day off the coast of Alabama, a team of researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts gathers, conducting the first test outside a laboratory for a potential new solution to a challenging problem: cleaning oil spills from water.

The invention, the Flame Refluxer, is “very simple,” says Ali Rangwala, a professor of fire protection engineering: Imagine a giant Brillo pad of copper wool sandwiched between layers of copper screen, with springy copper coils attached to the top.

“The coils collect the heat from the flame and they transmit it through the copper blanket,” Rangwala explains.

The goal is to make a hotter, faster and more complete burn that leaves less pollution.

Cleaning oil from water is a challenge, especially on the open sea. That was dramatically evident seven years ago, when a massive oil spill during the BP disaster polluted the Gulf of Mexico.

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The Flame Refluxer after a test burn.

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Debbie Elliott/NPR

Responders typically use three cleanup methods in an oil spill: skimmers and oil booms to soak it up, dispersants to break it up, and fire to burn it up. That’s called in-situ, or in-place, burning.

The federal government is backing research on the Flame Refluxer, which supporters hope will provide an effective and ecologically sound alternative.

For the test — at the U.S. Coast Guard’s Joint Maritime Test Facility on Little Sand Island in Mobile Bay — workers place the blanket inside a ring-shaped floating protective barrier, or fire boom, in a concrete pool. Oil is pumped from a nearby tank, and a long torch-like lighter sets it afire.

Before long, the fire is roaring with flames up to 12 feet high.

Rangwala monitors by video in a nearby research shed. “It’s looking very good,” he observes.

Source: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Credit: NPR

Engineers are tracking the fire’s heat and the emissions that are being captured by a strategically placed windsock downwind of the test burn.

The device potentially could reduce air pollution, as well as the layer of tar that remains after oil burns and sinks to the ocean floor, threatening marine life.

Rangwala says the copper blanket was designed to capture any remaining residue, but they’re finding that the tar is burning off as well.

He says the test indicates a hotter, quicker, cleaner burn.

“Currently it’s about three times faster than baseline,” he says. “And the smoke is also grayish in color, compared to black.”

The gray smoke, with less soot, is one of the things that Karen Stone is looking for.

“The lighter it is, the cleaner it is,” says Stone, an oil spill response engineer with the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

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Workers at the Coast Guard’s Joint Maritime Test Facility fit the Flame Refluxer with coils for a test burn.

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The agency has invested $1.5 million to develop the Flame Refluxer, and is also paying for other new technology.

It’s an effort to be better prepared to respond, after the 2010 BP disaster in the Gulf revealed some major gaps. For example, the country didn’t have enough fire boom on hand and had to scramble to borrow supply from other countries.

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Black smoke billows from a controlled burn of surface oil during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

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U.S. Coast Guard

“Once you have a spill, it really gets the attention,” says Stone. “We realize, wow, we really need to advance it and make it better, improve it, for when it happens again.”

Stone says the technology that is working in the Gulf environment also shows promise for responding to oil spills in the Arctic. But it is likely 5 to 10 years from being used in an actual disaster.

The next step is finding the best way to deploy and test it in open water.

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One of the themes that developed on Day 1 of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s hearings is that Democrats plan to make an issue of what they say is the Supreme Court’s pro-business leanings. In their opening statements on Monday, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee argued that Gorsuch is likely to continue the trend.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island alleged that when the court’s majority is made of Republican appointees, the narrow 5-4 decisions “line up to help corporations against humans.”

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said that the court under Chief Justice John Roberts is often called “a corporate court” and said a study by the left-leaning Constitutional Accountability Center found that it ruled for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 69 percent of the time.

Durbin also cited Gorsuch’s dissent in a case in which a truck driver lost his job after his rig broke down one bitterly cold night. (NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported on the case here.) The driver was instructed to stay with the truck, but he found himself growing numb in the unheated cab and so drove away to find warmth, leaving the trailer behind, and was fired for disobeying orders.

Durbin said it was 14 below that night, adding, “but not as cold as your dissent, Judge Gorsuch.” He added, “Thank goodness that the majority in this case pointed out that common sense and the Oxford dictionary” supported their view that the firing was without merit.

In his own opening statement, Gorsuch spoke of striving for impartiality and the support he has received across the political spectrum.

“In my decade on the bench, I have tried to treat all who come to court fairly and with respect. … My decisions have never reflected a judgment about the people before me — only my best judgment about the law and facts at issue in each particular case,” the nominee said. “For the truth is, a judge who likes every outcome he reaches is probably a pretty bad judge, stretching for the policy results he prefers rather than those the law compels.”

Gorsuch will begin taking questions from the senators on Tuesday morning.

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After less than a year as president of Uber, Jeff Jones is leaving the embattled ride-hailing company, Uber confirms.

“We want to thank Jeff for his six months at the company and wish him all the best,” an Uber spokesperson says in a statement.

Jones, previously Target’s chief marketing officer, was brought on by CEO Travis Kalanick last fall to boost Uber’s reputation.

Though Uber has long held its reputation as an aggressive startup, the company has been battling recent controversies, ranging from sexual harassment allegations to Kalanick’s abrasive behavior.

After a video surfaced earlier this year, showing Kalanick arguing with an Uber driver, the CEO admitted he needed leadership help, and announced his search for a new chief operating officer.

While that hunt appeared to threaten Jones’ role as second in command to Kalanick, in a statement to Recode, Jones simply says his leadership approach is “inconsistent” with what he saw happening at Uber.

Meanwhile, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick issued a note to staff: “After we announced our intention to hire a COO, Jeff came to the tough decision that he doesn’t see his future at Uber.”

Recodefirst reported Jones’ departure on Sunday, initially citing sources that claimed Jones’ departure was “directly related” to the company’s amassing controversies.

A number of recent scandals plague Uber, including:

• This month, The New York Times exposed Uber’s secret “Greyball” program, established in 2014 to evade authorities worldwide in cities where the service has been banned. Uber later announced it will prohibit the use of the program
• Last month, former Uber employee Susan Fowler Rigetti published a blog post describing systemic sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace. The viral post prompted Uber to launch an independent investigation, led by former U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder
• Earlier this year, a social media campaign encouraged consumers to #DeleteUber after CEO Travis Kalanick joined President Trump’s economic advisory council — he’s since quit
• People accused Uber of trying to profit from Trump’s immigration order and “breaking strike” by lifting surcharge pricing for airport protesters in New York

Jones joins a list of recent top executives to leave the company. Engineering executive Amit Singhal was asked to resign after failing to disclose a sexual harassment claim from his previous job at Google. This month, Uber’s vice president of product and growth Ed Baker stepped down, in addition to security researcher Charlie Miller’s departure.

Last month, Uber employees spoke with CNNTech about the company’s “grueling” work pace and work-life balance — or lack thereof.

“If you’re going to leave, people do so within the first year because the pace isn’t what they expected or what they’re used to,” said Neal Narayani, Uber’s head of people analytics.

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