With Work Visa System Collapsing; No One Asking A Key Question - Who Will Work Farms And Harvest Crops?
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The debate over guest workers is dividing Republican support. Jonathan Berry, who was nominated to be the solicitor at the Department of Labor, wrote the labor chapter for Project 2025, the rightwing proposal to overhaul the government from the Heritage Foundation thinktank. 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 more than a decade to pay off. Other co-authors of the chapter, such as economist Oren Cass, do not think the jobs should be eliminated, but that farmers should improve working conditions to attract citizens to them instead.
Ed. - Emphasis added. Also, yeah, that sounds like somebody who's never been outside the soft, cushy world of wingnut welfare.
On the other hand, Trump’s power depends on a coalition that includes agricultural communities, who voted for him at almost 80% in 2024, according to Investigate Midwest, a journalism non-profit. Agribusiness also donated more than $24m to his re-election. Farm groups insist US 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.
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If mass deportations go forward as promised, growers and ranchers will be even more desperate for these workers. Undocumented workers compose about 40% of the agricultural workforce, according to the US Department of Agriculture. These longtime farm workers say that the system is designed to replace them with this more vulnerable group, limiting their work opportunities and decreasing their union’s power by giving farmers an alternative labor pool.
“It’s very clear to us that the deportation of undocumented workers is to clear the field for bringing in H-2A workers instead of having these farm worker families that are part of our community now for over 20 years and providing them [legal] status to continue being productive community members,” said Rosalinda Guillen, a farm union leader in Washington state who grew up in the fields and founded Community to Community, a local non-profit. “Everybody in this country is an immigrant and has had the opportunity to build community and root themselves and all of a sudden the families that came here from Mexico don’t?”
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/28/farmworkers-h-2a-trump-agriculture
= new reply since forum marked as read
