Lawmakers hope the bill will help farmers facing a labor crisis, but farmworker groups say it will make it impossible for workers to afford basic necessities.
Lawmakers hope the bill will help farmers facing a labor crisis, but farmworker groups say it will make it impossible for workers to afford basic necessities.
June 30, 2026
June 30, 2026 – House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) introduced a bill today that would transform the country’s agricultural guestworker program, allowing migrants to work year-round on H-2A visas while significantly lowering costs for farmers and wages for workers.
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The bill, called the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026 (SAWA), writes into law several changes the Trump administration has already made through agency rulemaking. But it also goes further to make it easier for farmers to hire workers under the H-2A program.
In drafting a farm bill, Thompson met with farmers across the country. In those visits he said agriculture labor came up frequently.
“A lack of domestic workforce for these jobs, how cumbersome the H-2A visa program was, and the fact that the cost of ag labor was pushing some farmers to the brink of bankruptcy,” Thompson said during a press conference. “I decided we couldn’t sit back and let someone else solve this problem.”
Since Trump took office, members of the administration and Congress have suggested that expansion of the H-2A program could help farmers address labor shortages exacerbated by the administration’s immigration crackdown.
In 2024, Congress came close to passing compromise farm-labor legislation that would have slightly expanded the H-2A program but also created a long pathway to citizenship for migrant farmworkers who had been in the country for decades. It had the support of many farm and farmworker groups.
Now, with Trump’s hard line on immigration, the political environment has changed.
“It’s a wish list for H-2A employers on the backs of workers,” said Diego Lopez, director of government affairs for the United Farm Workers Foundation (UFW).
Lopez said the bill will effectively lower wages for farmworkers twice, by changing how the government calculates something called the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) and by allowing farms to charge workers for housing. The AEWR rate is the minimum wage the Department of Labor requires for H-2A workers, calculated in part to avoid impacting domestic farmworker wages.
The wage change will cut wages $3 to $7 per hour depending on the state, Lopez said, and housing deductions will reduce pay by another $1 to $3 per hour. The UFW has been able to estimate how much those changes will lower wages because the Trump administration already implemented them last fall, and the organization is currently challenging them in court.
The bill also regulates how much wages can increase annually, and Lopez said based on the change, it would take six years to restore wages to 2025 levels. “This takes from the pockets of farmworkers and makes them unable to afford groceries, rent, healthcare, and other basic needs for survival,” he said.
Large agriculture groups argue farms cannot afford to pay the higher wages. Dave Puglia, president and CEO of Western Growers Association, said at the press conference that the AEWR increase has outpaced already high inflation.
“Today the program is too costly, it’s too complex, and it’s too restrictive for modern agriculture,” Mike Joyner, president of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, said at the press conference.
Allowing the workers to stay year-round will plug some gaps for some farms, especially in industries like dairy that don’t shut down in the winter. Lawmakers who co-signed the bill said labor is the biggest issue vexing dairy farmers.
“It’s hurting our dairy farm workers, who are more vulnerable than they’ve ever been, and it’s hurting working families by raising the cost of groceries,” Representative Josh Riley (D-New York), said at the press conference. Riley was one of three Democrats to co-sign the legislation so far.
Farmworker advocates said making the program year-round ran counter to the intent of the program. The program as it stands now was created in 1986 to address domestic labor shortages through seasonal visa options.
If policymakers believe year-round workers from other countries are needed, Lopez said, they should create legal pathways for them to live and work here permanently. “We have bipartisan compromises like the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which provides a pathway to citizenship and includes many provisions for employers.”
The bill has already garnered support from over 400 agriculture groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation. But the National Farmers Union (NFU), which advocates for family farmers, said it has concerns about provisions giving meatpackers access to the H-2A program. Currently, food processing industries are unable to access the program, but meat processing plants can employ H-2B workers, or non-agricultural seasonal workers.
Rob Larew, president of NFU, said in a statement this change “could undermine the program’s original intent and harm the farmers and workers it was designed to serve.”
He added the bill does include important and overdue updates to the program for family farmers, he added, saying the union hopes to work with Thompson to address their concerns.
Labor falls outside the jurisdiction of the House Agriculture Committee, meaning the bill will need to go through the House Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). (Link to this story.)
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