May 12, 2025 – House lawmakers have resurrected a bill to help bolster immigrant farm labor amid Trump administration crackdowns on immigrants that have swept up farmworkers and labor organizers.
In a bipartisan effort, Representatives Dan Newhouse (R-Washington) and Zoe Lofgren (D-California) last week reintroduced the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a bill that would provide pathways for non-citizens to legally work on farms while reforming the H-2A visa program.
“Due to the diminishing supply of U.S. workers willing to perform migrant farm labor, our nation’s farmers are increasingly dependent on foreign workers to meet labor demands,” Lofgren’s office stated in a summary of the bill. “Without foreign workers, many U.S. farms will go out of business, causing a ripple effect in our economy and increasing our reliance on imported food.”
Among other initiatives, the bill provides a pathway for agriculture workers to attain legal status through continued agricultural work for four to eight years. It also mandates the use of E-verify on farms and seeks to streamline the H-2A temporary visa program for agricultural workers, providing three-year visas. And the law would temporarily freeze and then cap wage increases. H-2A wages are contentious: They are too high for some farms to afford, and at the same time, the program is rife with abuse because employees are tied to their employers for legal status and basic needs.
Due mostly to Republican opposition, previous attempts at similar legislation—which represents compromises between farmworker advocates and industry—came incredibly close to passing but ultimately failed. Farmworker groups are also split on the legislation, with some supporting and others opposing. Now, though, farms are facing the prospect of fewer workers amid an immigration crackdown that has snared farmworkers and decreased border crossings, giving them more impetus to strengthen legal pathways and other reforms.
President Donald Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have both signaled they are in favor of finding ways to keep immigrant labor in farms, despite broader attempts to expel undocumented workers. (Link to this post.)
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