Over 300,000 foreign workers on H-2A visas come to the United States every year to plow fields, prune trees, and harvest crops in states from Washington to Georgia, Florida to New York, Texas to California. But as federal immigration policies change rapidly, farmers and workers alike are uncertain about their future.
“Without [this guest worker program], I believe agriculture in the U.S. would decline a lot because people there don’t want to do the work,” said one of the workers.
As the fate of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented farmworkers remains in limbo amid President Trump’s mass deportations threats, and the administration’s H-2A policies are undecided, the future of these guest workers remains unclear. Their numbers grow each year–and they are increasingly central to an industry historically dominated by undocumented workers. The industry isn’t creating new jobs either.
Farmers agree with farmworkers. They say they cannot attract other workers to their rural fields.
The debate over guest workers intensifies. Jonathan Berry, who was nominated to be the solicitor at the Department of Labor, wrote the labor chapter for the massive proposal to overhaul government called Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation think tank. That section advocates for replacing H-2A workers with local workers and automation. While technology could replace some specific farm tasks, many crops still depend primarily on human labor, and small farmers say they can’t afford to invest in equipment that could take over a decade to pay off. Other co-authors of the chapter, like economist Oren Cass, do not think the jobs should be eliminated, but that farmers should improve working conditions to attract citizens to them instead.
On the other hand, Trump’s power depends on a coalition that includes agricultural communities, who voted for him at 80% in 2024, according to Investigate Midwest, a nonprofit almost journalism nonprofit. Agribusiness also donated over $24 million to his reelection.
Farm groups insist U.S. Citizens are unwilling to do the arduous labor, and that eliminating H-2A workers could collapse the food system.
They generally advocate for loosening regulations for H-2A workers, like reducing wage and housing requirements. Trump heeded their calls before. In 2019, his Department of Labor unsuccessfully proposed removing some regulations on the H-2A.
