The Trump administration just quietly acknowledged its immigration crackdown has caused significant labor shortages in the agricultural sector. Per the New York Times, they have now embraced a shift in policy that makes it cheaper for farmers to hire temporary immigrant farmworkers through the H-2A visa program, effectively lowering their wages.
Administration officials had vowed that mass deportations would lead to a “100 percent American work force” with “higher wages with better benefits” for native workers. However, after noting that the “near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal work force” was causing production disruptions and threatening the stability of domestic food prices, the Department of Labor revamped the H-2A program.
