WH making it cheaper for farmers to hire immigrant farmworkers on temporary visas

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For years, the agricultural sector has faced a tight labor market as farmworkers age and fewer new immigrants and younger Americans are willing to toil in the fields. Top Trump administration officials vowed that mass deportations would help, leading to “higher wages with better benefits” and a “100 percent American work force.”

But the administration has quietly acknowledged in recent months that its immigration raids and crackdown on the border have aggravated the issue. So it has instead turned to an alternative source, making it cheaper for farmers to hire immigrant farmworkers on temporary visas.

Many farmers have celebrated those changes, made to an increasingly popular visa program known as H-2A, noting the difficulty in hiring American workers and tough economic conditions for the industry. But immigration hawks and labor unions alike are opposed, arguing the move will only increase the share of foreign workers and hurt native workers and suppress their wages.

The simmering debate underscores how some of the administration’s top goals of reducing immigration, keeping food prices low and helping American workers may inevitably conflict. The competing interests at play also show the spillover effects of Mr. Trump’s hard-line approach to legal and illegal immigration.

Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, said in a statement that the administration was enacting “real reforms to ease regulatory burdens and lower labor costs.”

“The farm economy is in a difficult situation, and President Trump is utilizing all the tools available to ensure farmers have what they need to be successful,” she said.

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