GOP Agriculture Chair Eyes Expansion of Foreign Farm Worker Visas
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson is preparing legislation to expand the H-2A foreign agricultural worker visa program, which critics say discourages farms from investing in automation technology.
The Pennsylvania Republican’s draft proposal would make it significantly easier for U.S. agricultural employers to import foreign labor rather than invest in automation technology, according to reports obtained by the outlet.
The H-2A visa program currently allows American farms to bring in an unlimited number of foreign agricultural workers. Thompson’s planned expansion would further loosen restrictions on the program that agriculture industry lobbyists have long sought to relax amid claims of labor shortages.
According to reporting from PoliticoPro, the draft legislation contains a key provision that would classify any contract under 350 days as qualifying for temporary status, regardless of whether the underlying position is actually year-round work. This change would open the door for operations such as dairy farms to access H-2A workers, fulfilling a longstanding industry demand.
Thompson’s office declined to comment when contacted by Breitbart News.
The proposed expansion runs counter to growing evidence that American farms can successfully mechanize operations through milk machines, harvesting robots, and fruit-picking drones. Critics of the H-2A program argue that government policy should instead incentivize technological advancement and automation rather than dependence on imported labor.
The program has faced repeated scrutiny for enabling farms to replace qualified American workers with cheaper foreign labor. Less than a year ago, the Department of Justice determined that a Mississippi-based company had brought in foreign H-2A visa workers despite having American applicants who were both qualified and available for the positions.
In 2023, Washington State’s Attorney General secured a $3.4 million settlement against a mushroom farm that had terminated mostly female American farmworkers and replaced them with predominantly male foreign workers arriving on H-2A visas.
RJ Hauman of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement recently highlighted the program’s explosive growth despite major technological advances in agricultural automation. Writing in The Federalist, Hauman noted that H-2A participation has surged from approximately 50,000 workers in 2005 to nearly 400,000 today—an eightfold increase over two decades.
Hauman pointed out that nearly half of all crop farmworkers remain illegal aliens, demonstrating that the H-2A program has not replaced illegal labor but has simply been added on top of it. Immigration policy should not function as an agricultural input, he argued.
The proposed expansion would come at a time when agricultural mechanization technology has never been more advanced or accessible, raising questions about whether policy is being shaped by farm industry lobbying interests rather than long-term economic and technological considerations for American agriculture.
With information from Breitbart News
