Jun 11, 2025
Ag Labor Review: Trump administration teases ag worker solution
Following a recent cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump dangled a tantalizing morsel for ag employers.
The topic of what to do with the existing domestic workforce is one of the many vexing issues that have faced agricultural employers, as we have repeatedly attempted to advance ag labor reform legislation in the U.S. Congress. After his discussion in the Cabinet meeting with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, President Trump teased a possible solution to this issue that could provide ag with an opportunity.
We know a couple of things about the domestic workers who come to work on U.S. farms and ranches. One thing is that there are fewer and fewer domestic workers willing to come on the farm and be ready, willing and available to work when we need them. We also know that this domestic cohort is by far the largest within the workforce.
Further, the domestic workers are aging out, and the H-2A component grows as the children of these existing workers are unlikely to follow in their forebears’ footsteps and find their way to American farms and ranches to work. Temporary or seasonal employment is not as attractive as full-time, year-round jobs.
We also know that a significant number of our domestic teammates are not present in the U.S. with authorized statuses. They are here illegally and may represent about 40% of the domestic workers in our businesses. If we consider that our total domestic ag workforce may total as many as 2.5 million people, that could mean there are as many as 1 million agricultural workers who are not authorized to be in the country.
That’s a lot of people.
Over the years and dating back to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), the question of how to legislatively handle ag labor reform with the reality of the status of our domestic workforce has been a challenge. Under IRCA, a system was established for these individuals to “emerge from the shadows” and become legal. It has also been alleged that under the IRCA system, many non-agricultural workers played the system and fraudulently obtained legal status.
This circumstance still does not sit well with those politicians who were in Congress then, and many of them retain bad memories about what occurred. When working on a different version of ag labor reform legislation a couple of years ago, I was in now-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley’s office. His staff told me that the now 91-year-old Senator recalled the fraud well and would not support any type of “amnesty” for these unauthorized people. “Amnesty” is not what we would be looking for, but some type of presence with legal status instead.
Following the cabinet meeting earlier this year, President Trump indicated a willingness to allow unauthorized workers on farms and in the hospitality industry to get a letter from their employer that they were needed to work. He also indicated the workers could then leave the country or “self-deport” and then be allowed to return to work for the employer.
This “self-deportation” and reentry process needs refinement so employers and our people are confident the process would lead to a successful outcome for all, including the government.
We are excited by the possibility the president’s comments represent. We are hopeful the administration will engage with the employer community to determine how we could collaborate and evolve the logistics alluded to and see how we could make the proposal work. This may be an opportunity, albeit not legislatively, to bring about a nugget of ag labor reform into reality.
A tantalizing morsel from the president to be sure.
