A farmworker is picking and bundling radishes while on her knees. Her pay is partly tied to how quickly she works.
“This is skilled work and it's very hard work, it's very backbreaking work. And that doesn’t include the pesticides and heat,” said Areli Arteaga Sanders, the Political Legislative Director with the United Farm Workers union. She used to do work like this in the fields of Idaho.
They are part of an insecure system where 42% of laborers have no work authorization, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“We've lost 140,000 farms in the last five years,” said John Walt Boatright, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Director of Government Affairs..
While tariffs are a concern for farmers, their big concern is their workforce.
“From what we hear from our members, labor is at the top of that list,” said Boatright.
President Donald Trump has ramped up deportations, with a focus on removing those who entered the country illegally and have criminal records. But fears are of concern to farmers and workers alike. Today the issues have heightened as farmers are caught between the economics of timely crop picking and adhering to worker programs to minimize disruptive immigration raids.
This has some taking a new look at the agricultural worker program known as the H2-A. It issues guest worker visas for several months at a time.
For decades, it has had many critics who cite a number of frustrations – from its complicated processes to numerous costs and its lack of pathways to citizenship. Both workers and farmers have repeatedly called for an overhaul.
“We've gone to each new Congress and said, you know, we are floundering out here in terms of the ability to continue to produce a safe and abundant food supply,” said Boatright.
By itself, the program doesn’t create enough workers for the country’s farms. That’s despite the fact that H-2A visas have grown dramatically from tens of thousands two decades ago to hundreds of thousands today.
According to the USDA, the number of H-2A certifications increased more than sevenfold between 2005 and 2023, from just over 48,000 positions to around 378,000. About 80% of those resulted in H2-A visas.
"We're going to work with farmers …” said President Trump at an April Cabinet meeting. “They’ll go out, they’re gonna come back as legal workers.”
Those remarks remained vague as he made similar remarks during his first couple of months in office. It left farmworkers questioning whether they’ll be able to return if they leave the country.
Maria Lourdes, whose last name we are not using, works in Wiggins, Colo., about an hour drive from the Denver metro area.
In Spanish, she explained she’s been picking onions recently. Maria Lourdes has had two decades of experience in the fields. That’s on par with many farmworkers – according to the Labor Department, many of them have more than a decade of experience.
She said she used to spend six months of the year doing this kind of work. Now, she only works for about a month and a half. Increasingly, she says H-2A guest workers have replaced her.
It's a trend the farmworkers’ union said is becoming more commonplace.
“So her salary went from about $25,000 a year down to about $15,000,” said Arteaga Sanders.
An experienced farmworker who became a U.S. citizen sued and won his case against a California farm. He alleged he was discriminated against as a citizen when the farm employed guest workers instead.
Boatright said that shouldn’t be happening. The rules around the H2-A program are specific.
“If a farmer or an H-2A employer has a domestic worker that approaches the farm and wants to work, that farmer has to employ that worker,” he said.
Farmworkers have long fought to be appreciated for the work they do.
“These are the forgotten people. The undereducated, the underprotected, the under clothed, the underfed…”
That’s what journalist Edward R. Murrow said of farmworkers in the 1960 documentary “Harvest of Shame.”
“We should like you to meet some of your fellow citizens who harvest the food for the best fed nation on earth,” he said at the beginning of the documentary.
In the 1960s and 70s, the United Farm Workers union staged a multi-year boycott against grape growers in California that resulted in some improvements in wages and working conditions.
More reforms took place in the 1980s with the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Additional proposals, which addressed longer-term, renewable visas and pathways to citizenship for long-term workers have languished since then.
Amid Trump’s immigration crackdowns and hopes for a more steady workforce, farmers’ crops do not wait.
Boatright emphasizes that without foreign workers, farmers would not be able to harvest their crops.
“Our workforce is essential to the success and to the success of American agriculture,” he said. “And without reforms, we're not improving and keeping up with the competitiveness that we need to be able to to flourish in the global marketplace.”
Boatright said two main issues need to be addressed: Providing legal status for long-term workers and creating a steady flow of workers for the future.
Unfortunately, “we haven’t seen the political will,” he said, to meaningfully and successfully address these issues.
The American Business Immigration Coalition has launched a “Secure our Borders, Secure our Workforce” campaign, aimed at advocating for immigration reform that keeps the border secure but also expands legal pathways to citizenship. James O’Neill, the Director of Legislative Affairs for the American Business Immigration Coalition, said as their campaign slogan implies, it’s important to do both simultaneously.
“If we have a situation which we do, where 60% of ag workers lack legal status, then getting them some kind of legal status to secure the workforce they already have is important,” O’Neill said. “It's also important to have future flow, pathways for additional workers that we still have a need for to be able to come here and do the work that we desperately need them to do.”
That’s a situation that applies to Maria Lourdes, the farmworker in Colorado.
“Las personas que ya estamos establecidos aquí no podemos entrar en ese programa,” she said, explaining workers like her can't get into that program.
Although Maria Lourdes is an experienced worker, with 20 years of experience, an H-2A visa is not an option. Her status prevents her from obtaining one.
“Nos hicieron llamar trabajadores esenciales,” she said. New workers aren’t experienced workers, she explains. They were considered “essential” during the pandemic. Now, she and her colleagues are “back in the shadows” while toiling in the fields to help feed the country.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
