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As the president’s immigration policies squeeze an already tight supply of farm labor, the Trump administration is making it cheaper to hire foreign farmworkers.
Mr. Talbott’s point about the lack of domestic workers is reflected in the data. Under the H-2A program, employers must also demonstrate an inability to hire U.S.-based workers. In 2025, only 182 of more than 415,000 advertised positions received a domestic applicant.
In the past two decades, the number of certified H-2A visa positions has risen sharply, to nearly 400,000 in the 2025 fiscal yearfrom about 50,000 in 2005. These temporary workers now make up 15 percent of all crop workers. (About 40 percent of crop workersare unauthorized migrants and about a third are American citizens, according to the latest government estimates.)
Maria, a farmworker of nearly three decades in Idaho who declined to share her last name because she is not authorized to work in the United States, said in an interview that she had witnessed the program’s growth firsthand. Over the past four years, she has spent fewer and fewer weeks planting and harvesting onions, beans, alfalfa and wheat as more and more H-2A workers arrive.
To make up for the lost hours, Maria has resorted to selling tamales while other local workers have taken on second jobs. And her American-born 17-year-old son was unable to find a job in the fields and was told that teenagers were no longer wanted, given the availability of H-2A workers.
This year, as a result of wage cuts to H-2A workers, Maria may also see her hourly earnings drop to $11 from $17 — a reduction that has her considering leaving Idaho to look for work elsewhere.
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“I don’t think it’s fair that our pay will be lowered so much,” Maria said, noting that although she was nearing retirement age, she could not afford to stop working.
The predicament Maria and her son face underline a point made by economists: Lowering wages for H-2A workers will not lead to more American workers in agriculture or increased pay for native workers.
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, estimated that the methodological changes would result in a $2 billion cut to the annual wages of guest farmworkers — and a $3 billion cut for U.S.-based farmworkers.
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Philip Martin, a farm labor economist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, said he was skeptical of the administration’s claims of an impending mass shortage in agricultural labor. Whatever the justification, he noted the moves would not increase the number of American workers in agriculture.
“It’s a basic economic point,” he said, adding, “If you have a shortage of something like energy — gas and oil — you raise the price to give people an incentive to go out and find more, right?”
Reducing wages, he said, will instead mean that American farmers will rely increasingly on mechanization, guest farmworkers and food imports.
Congress, too, is considering more sweeping changes to the program. A bipartisan bill introduced last year would streamline the application process, reduce costs and expand it to yearlong employers that currently do not qualify, like dairy farmers. (The bill would also establish a pathway to legal status for unauthorized farmworkers already in the United States.)
Mr. Talbott, the orchard operator in Colorado, praised the administration’s changes to the H-2A program and said he hoped Congress could make it more transparent and easier to use. Still, he worried that the moves were “too little, too late,” noting that several produce growers in his area were already closing shop this year.
“Labor is a big component of why people are saying this enterprise is not viable, I’m not doing this anymore,” he said.
That is why for Mr. Talbott, the H-2A program is essential. “We can’t farm without going back” to guest workers, he said.
Charo Henríquez contributed translations.
Linda Qiu is a Times reporter who specializes in fact-checking statements made by politicians and public figures. She has been reporting and fact-checking public figures for nearly a decade.
Our Coverage of U.S. Immigration
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Turning to Migrant Workers: As President Trump’s immigration policies squeeze an already tight supply of farm labor, the Trump administration is making it cheaper to hire foreign farmworkers.
Deportation Protections: The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to end a program shielding hundreds of thousands of Haitians from deportation, while a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from ending deportation protections for more than a thousand Somalis living in the United States, largely because lawyers for the Trump administration had been unprepared to defend it in court.
ICE Shooting in Texas: Officials said that Ruben Ray Martinez had intentionally run over an officer, a claim his family and friend denied. Newly released footage from that 2025 encounter, where the 23-year-old Texan was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent, reveals a chaotic and confusing scene.
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