Trump’s push for more deportations could boost demand for foreign farmworkers with ‘guest worker’ visas

The US has an important choice to make regarding agriculture.

It can import more people to pick crops and do other kinds of agricultural labour, it can raise wages enough to lure more US citizens and immigrants with legal status to take these jobs, or it can import more food. All three options contradict key Trump administration priorities: Reducing immigration, keeping prices low and importing fewer goods and services.

The big tax-and-spending bill President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, included $170 billion to fund the detention and deportation of those living in the US without authorisation. And about 1 million of them work in agriculture, accounting for more than 40 per cent of all farmworkers.

As the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants ramps up, one emerging solution is to replace at least some deported farmworkers with foreigners who are given special visas that allow them to help with the harvest but require them to go home after their visas expire.

Such “guest worker” programmes have existed for decades, leading to today’s H-2A visa programme. As of 2023, more than 310,000 foreigners, around 13 per cent of the nation’s 2.4 million farmworkers, were employed through this programme. About 90 per cent of the foreign workers with these visas come from Mexico, and nearly all are men. The states where the largest numbers of them go are California, Florida, Georgia and Washington.

As a professor of Latin American politics and US-Latin American relations, I teach my students to consider the difficult trade-offs that governments face. If the Trump administration removes a significant share of the immigrants living in the US without legal permission from the agricultural labor force to try to meet its deportation goals, farm owners will have few options.

Few options available

First, farm owners could raise wages and improve working conditions enough to attract US citizens and immigrants who are legal permanent residents or otherwise in the US with legal status.

But many agricultural employers say they can’t find enough people to hire who can legally work — at least without higher wages and much-improved job requirements. Without any undocumented immigrant farmworkers, the prices of US-sourced crops and other agricultural products would spike, creating an incentive for more food to be imported.

Second, farm owners could employ fewer people. That would require either growing different crops that require less labor or becoming more reliant on machinery to plant and harvest. But that would mean the US could have to import more food. And automation for some crops is very expensive. For others, such as for berries, it’s currently impossible.

It’s also possible that some farm owners could put their land to other uses, ceasing production, but that would also necessitate more imported food.

Trump administration’s suggested fixes

US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has predicted that farm owners will soon find plenty of US citizens to employ.

She declared on July 8 that the new Medicaid work requirements included in the same legislative package as the immigration enforcement funds would encourage huge numbers of US citizens to start working in the fields instead of losing their health insurance through that government programme.

Farm trade groups say this scenario is far-fetched.

For one thing, most adults enrolled in the Medicaid programme who can work already do. Many others are unable to do so due to disabilities or caregiving obligations.

Few people enrolled in Medicaid live close enough to a farm to work at one, and even those who do aren’t capable of doing farmwork. When farm owners tried putting people enrolled in a welfare programme to work in the fields in the 1990s, it failed. Another experiment in the 1960s, which deployed teenagers, didn’t pan out either because the teens found the work too hard.

It seems more likely that farm owners will try to hire many more foreign farmworkers to do temporary but legal jobs through the H-2A programme.

Although he has not made it an official policy, Trump seems to be moving toward this same conclusion.

In June, for example, Trump said his administration was working on “some kind of a temporary pass” for immigrants lacking authorisation to be in the US who are working on farms and in hotels.

Established in 1952, numbers now rising quickly

The guest worker system, established in 1952 and revised significantly in 1986, has become a mainstay of US agriculture because it offers important benefits to both the farm owners who need workers and the foreign workers they hire.

There is no cap on the number of potential workers. The number of H-2A visas issued is based only on how many employers request them. Farm owners may apply for visas after verifying that they are unable to locate enough workers who are US citizens or present in the US with authorization.

To protect US workers, the government mandates that H-2A workers earn an “adverse effect wage rate.” The Labor Department sets that hourly wage, which ranges from $10.36 in Puerto Rico to about $15 in several southern states, to more than $20 in California, Alaska and Hawaii. These wages are set at relatively high levels to avoid putting downward pressure on what other US workers are paid for the same jobs.

After certification, farm owners recruit workers in a foreign country who are offered a contract that includes transportation from their home country and a trip back — assuming they complete the contract.

The programme provides farm owners with a short-term labor force. It guarantees the foreign workers who obtain H-2A visas relatively high wages, as well as housing in the US. That combination has proven increasingly popular in recent years: The annual number of H-2A visas rose to 310,700 in 2023, a more than fivefold increase since 2010.

Possible downsides

Boosting the number of agricultural guest workers would help fill some gaps in the agricultural labor force and reduce the risk of crops going unharvested. But it seems clear to me that a sudden change would pose risks for workers and farm owners alike.

Workers would be at risk because oversight of the H-2A programme has historically been weak. Despite that lax track record, some unscrupulous farmers have been fined or barred from participating in the H-2A programme because of unpaid wages and other abuses.

Relying even more on guest farmworkers than the US does today would also swap workers who have built lives and families north of the border with people who are in the US on a temporary basis. Immigration opponents are unlikely to object to this trade-off, but to immigrant rights groups, this arrangement would be cruel and unfair to workers with years of service behind them.

What’s more, the workers with guest visas can be at risk of exploitation and abuse. In 2022, the US attorney for the Southern District of Georgia described conditions for H-2A workers at an onion farm the government had investigated as “modern-day slavery.”

For farm owners, the downside of ramping up guest worker programmes is that it could increase costs and make production less efficient and more costly. That’s because transporting Mexican farmworkers back and forth each year is complicated and expensive. Farm groups say that compliance with H-2A visa requirements is cumbersome. It can be particularly difficult for small farms to participate in this programme.

Some farm owners have objected to the costs of employing H-2A workers. Rollins has said that the Trump administration believes that the mandatory wages are too high.

To be sure, these problems aren’t limited to agriculture. Hotels, restaurants and other hospitality businesses, which rely heavily on undocumented workers, can also temporarily employ some foreigners through the H-2B visa programme — which is smaller than the H-2A programme, limits the number of visas issued and is available only for jobs considered seasonal.

Home health care providers and many other kinds of employers who rely on people who can’t legally work for them could also struggle. But so far, there is no temporary visa programme available to help them fill those gaps.

If the US does deport millions of workers, the price of tomatoes, elder care, restaurant meals and roof repairs would probably rise substantially. A vast increase in the number of guest workers is a potential but partial solution, but it would multiply problems that are inherent in these temporary visa programmes.