Renewed calls for sweeping deportations have sent a wave of panic through America’s farms—and for good reason. Almost 14.5 million tons of produce were left unharvested across the U.S. in 2023 alone. Labor shortages already plague agriculture. Mass deportations will exacerbate the issue.
But the crisis is bigger than immigration enforcement. Even as undocumented workers are targeted, the legal system that’s supposed to supply agricultural labor—the H-2A visa program—is riddled with costs, bureaucracy, and inefficiency. American farmers are being crushed not only by worker shortages but by a broken guest worker system that cannot meet their needs.
In a recent report I authored for the John Locke Foundation, titled “Harvest on Hold,” I analyzed the agricultural labor market in North Carolina, one of the largest agricultural sectors in the United States. However, the issues are nationwide. From California to Florida, farmers face a shrinking domestic workforce, burdensome labor regulations, and a bureaucratic mess that makes hiring legally very difficult.
In recent years, participation in the H-2A program, which allows employers to utilize foreign nationals for temporary agricultural jobs, has surged because domestic workers aren’t filling those jobs. Yet farmers using H-2A must pay those workers the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR)—often 20 percent to 30 percent higher than prevailing local wages—plus provide free housing and transportation and navigate a gauntlet of federal paperwork. For small and mid-sized farms, the costs are daunting.
The program’s complexity is one of its biggest flaws. Employers must prove to the Department of Labor that no qualified U.S. workers are available, comply with strict recruitment criteria, and then petition U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services before workers can even apply for visas abroad. Each step introduces potential delays or errors, which can be a huge issue when labor is needed at harvest time. These multiagency bottlenecks leave crops vulnerable and farm output unpredictable.
Additionally, while the AEWR is intended to protect domestic wages, it frequently fails to accurately reflect local market conditions. For example, states with dramatically different cost-of-living levels—such as North Carolina and Virginia—are lumped into the same wage region. The result is an inflated AEWR that doesn’t match what the local economy can bear.
In late 2024, the AEWR for California—the nation’s largest agricultural-producing state—was set at $19.97 per hour, higher than the median farmworker wage in California, which is $18.08 per hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When considering the additional costs of providing housing and paying legal fees, the hourly wage farmers are paying is far higher than the AEWR of $19.97 per hour.
Declining immigration from traditional labor sources like Mexico, stricter border enforcement, and increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric are adding to the challenge. They have made it harder to attract H-2A workers, even when employers comply with the requirements.
Meanwhile, automation remains out of reach for most growers, especially those producing fruits and vegetables that still require manual harvesting. Technology alone can’t close the labor gap fast enough.
Without fixing H-2A, tougher immigration enforcement is a recipe for empty fields, higher food prices, and failing farms.
There are ways to reform H-2A so that the U.S. agricultural industry isn’t beaten down. The AEWR can be modernized by linking wages to real local market conditions. The H-2A application process can be streamlined into a simple, unified system to reduce delays and costs. There can be more flexibility when it comes to housing and transportation obligations on behalf of employers. And the labor market can be opened to private recruitment firms in order to increase efficiency and competition.
Without a legal path to hiring the workers they need, mass deportations will gut the agricultural workforce with no backup plan, hurting farms, driving up grocery prices, and weakening America’s food security. If Washington ignores the warnings from farmers, the real harvest this fall will be shortages and higher costs for everyone.
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