{"id":1333,"date":"2026-07-23T01:51:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T01:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2026-07-23T01:51:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T01:51:53","slug":"farmers-want-changes-to-make-h-2a-visa-program-more-favorable-to-their-businesses-propublica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=1333","title":{"rendered":"Farmers Want Changes to Make H-2A Visa Program More Favorable to Their Businesses \u2014 ProPublica"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Farmers<\/div>

<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s been nearly two years since I started reporting on abuses of foreign farmworkers in Georgia. Some of the workers I tracked down had come to the U.S. legally through the H-2A visa program and were harmed and exploited by labor contractors<\/a> \u2014 despite protections that were supposed to be guaranteed<\/a> by the federal government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During those two years, I\u2019ve thought a lot about how the government\u2019s obligation to keep foreign workers safe has collided with another priority: to help U.S. farmers stay in business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Farmers have long pushed for fewer H-2A regulations. That\u2019s in part because of the skyrocketing costs of the program, which sets minimum hourly wages and requires that farmers pay for workers\u2019 housing and transportation. As one Georgia farmer wrote last year in a letter to the U.S. Department of Labor, \u201cIt has felt like every policy that pertained to the H2A program was made focusing solely on the benefit of the migrant worker.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of that brings to mind a freezing cold weekend in January 2025, early on in my reporting, when I showed up at a farmers\u2019 conference in Savannah, Georgia. What the farmers sought at that gathering \u2014 and what happened in the months that followed \u2014 exemplifies the tension between keeping workers safe and keeping farms solvent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After I made my way through a brightly lit convention hall \u2014\u00a0past the tractor salesman\u2019s stall, the labor regulator\u2019s booth, and tables of peach preserves and dried blueberries \u2014 I arrived in a room full of farmers eager to know what President Donald Trump\u2019s second term would mean for an industry dependent on foreign labor and facing a rising number of bankruptcies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A small group of lawyers and lobbyists gave several presentations to the farmers. One of them vowed that Trump could \u201cprofoundly\u201d change the program, in part by making it easier to hire H-2A workers and pay them less. And if the lobbyists\u2019 plans were successful, farmers would save even more money by facing fewer labor protections for workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is on the table,\u201d said Braden Boucek, an attorney who has represented the farm industry in challenges to the H-2A program\u2019s requirements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the year to come, Trump\u2019s immigration policies would drastically reduce the number of immigrants crossing the border and accelerate deportations of people without legal status living in the country. But one important pathway \u2014 the H-2A visa program \u2014 would remain wide open. And the administration, under pressure from the farm industry, would be quick to embrace the types of changes the lobbyists told the farmers about on that frigid January weekend.<\/p>\n

\n

To get the financial relief that farmers were seeking, three key things had to change with the H-2A program, the lawyers and lobbyists told the farmers at the conference.<\/p>\n

The first was to overturn parts of a rule enacted by the Biden administration. The rule granted workers the right to pursue certain union protections, including ones that would shield them from unfair treatment by their employers. Farmers opposed the rule because they felt it would make it harder to run their businesses.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the conference, I listened as former U.S. Labor Department assistant secretary Leon Sequeira told farmers how several ongoing lawsuits could help \u201cinvalidate\u201d parts of the rule. The previous June, a Georgia blueberry farm, along with 17 states, had sued the administration, alleging that the rule went beyond what Congress allowed. That lawsuit, along with two others, had led to injunctions that temporarily halted part of the rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sequeira, who is a lawyer in one of the three cases, later told me that the legal effort \u201cisn\u2019t about denying more protection for workers.\u201d Rather, it\u2019s intended to protect farmers from overreach by the U.S. Labor Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can certainly differ on whether or not workers should receive more protection under the law,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut as multiple courts have said, that is a decision for Congress to make in passing laws, not the agency.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Five months after Trump took office, his administration suspended enforcement of President Joe Biden\u2019s rule. It then proposed to rescind parts of it. That proposal is pending.<\/p>\n

The second change was to slow or stop wage increases for H-2A workers that had soared during the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. After months of industry pressure, the Trump administration last year reduced the hourly pay rate, which it expects will save farmers more than $2 billion a year. Those savings are projected to cost H-2A workers up to 32% of their annual wages<\/a>, according to the think tank the Economic Policy Institute.<\/p>\n

The last thing I heard at the conference was an ambitious legal strategy to advance the interests of farmers even further.<\/p>\n

One of the lawyers, Ann Margaret Pointer, explained that three recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings had together diminished the powers of the federal government. One decision limits the ability<\/a> of federal agencies to create new regulations. Another makes it harder for agencies to fine companies<\/a> that violate some federal laws. And a third makes it easier for employers to challenge federal regulations<\/a> that had been on the books for many years.<\/p>\n

Pointer said those decisions could pave the way for future lawsuits challenging the visa program \u2014 and could strengthen the odds of farmers winning those lawsuits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All three of those efforts were vital, she explained to the farmers at the conference, to \u201cprevent some of the costs to comply with the H-2A program from falling on your shoulders.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

I recently reached out to the lawyers and lobbyists who spoke at that conference to ask how they felt about their progress on the plan they\u2019d described.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Boucek, who is now a U.S. attorney in Tennessee, declined to comment for this story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pointer and Sequeira both said that the Trump administration\u2019s initial changes to the program improved the way it works for farmers. Sequeira also said that the changes are just the beginning of the wish list for the agriculture industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pointer and Sequeira said the larger changes the industry is seeking to the H-2A program will require action from Congress. They pointed to a recently filed bill<\/a> that proposes to limit wage hikes, cut red tape for farmers and allow additional sectors of the farming industry to participate in H-2A. (Labor and immigrant advocacy organizations oppose the bill, saying it would harm farmworkers and would amount to executive overreach.)<\/p>\n

Until Congress changes the statute, Sequeira said, the Labor Department \u201ccan only fiddle around the edges.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been nearly two years since I started reporting on abuses of foreign farmworkers in Georgia. Some of the workers I tracked down had come to the U.S. legally through the H-2A visa program and were harmed and exploited by labor contractors \u2014 despite protections that were supposed to be guaranteed by the federal government.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20251022-Melton-H2A-CMA_3695-social.jpg?resize=2000,1050","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[2644,79,2643,2641,2302,81,2642],"class_list":["post-1333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-businesses","tag-farmers","tag-favorable","tag-h2a","tag-program","tag-propublica","tag-visa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}