The Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies have had an effect on the nation’s farms: worsening a longstanding labor shortage that has pushed officials to expand the use of a temporary guest-worker program that critics say undercuts U.S. workers.
Well, well, well…
Not to “I told ya so” (though the above “Well, well, well…” does as much), but it seems that the quota-obsessed Homeland Security efforts to cruelly round up the folks we rely on to keep us fed have backfired.
Who knew? (I am being insufferable now).
I’ll tell you who: farmers.
For years, farmers have struggled to find field labor as an aging workforce and fewer new immigrants and younger Americans choose farm work.
But Trump promised that tougher enforcement would, in fact, help both farmers, farm workers, and the rest of us.
Mass deportations would open jobs for Americans, delivering “higher wages with better benefits” and creating a “100 percent American work force.”
In practice, however, recent enforcement efforts and border crackdowns have exacerbated farm labor shortages, the administration now acknowledges, albeit not very loudly.
Turns out, most Americans don’t want to harvest fruits and vegetables.
Who knew?
Same answer as above: farmers, though many of them voted for Trump anyway.
[Also check out: Postindustrial Interview: West Virginia’s ACLU leader talks immigration enforcement in the Mountain State]
Faced with mounting crop labor gaps, the Department of Labor moved last year to ease rules for the H-2A agricultural visa program, making it cheaper and faster for farmers to recruit temporary foreign workers.
The changes recalculate how wages for H‑2A workers are determined — a revision that, depending on the state, effectively reduces hourly pay — and allow employers to count housing as part of compensation.
Who gets hurt by this change of heart, resulting in workers getting paid less for the same amount of labor?
That’s an easy one: farm workers, both foreign-born and those Americans who do farm work.
So, in case you missed it: the Trump administration targeted the workers we rely on to harvest our food, quietly realized we desperately need immigrants, then created new rules that let farmers pay them less.
It’s all shameful and sickening, to say the least.
I just wish it surprised me.
