DEPORTATIONS & BUSINESSTexas Lawmaker Proposes Beefing Up Temporary Worker Program to Ease Farm Labor Shortages
The South Texas Republican’s “Bracero 2.0” legislation —named after a 1940s temporary labor program —would raise wages for migrant farmers and simplify applications for employers, amid other changes.
U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz filed legislation Monday that would revamp a temporary worker program to help ease farm labor shortages largely provoked by the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration raids targeting undocumented workers.
De La Cruz, a Republican from Edinburg, introduced the Bracero Program 2.0 Act on Monday, a bill that makes changes to a temporary visa program for agriculture workers, known as H-2A visas.
The proposal would raise wages for program participants, streamline the application process for employers, and launch a regional pilot program that would allow workers to change jobs within a state without having to reapply for a visa.
“This will provide solutions desperately needed for hard-working immigrants. With workforce shortages challenging our communities, the Bracero Program 2.0 will bring stability and certainty for South Texas,” De La Cruz said in a statement.
Farmworkers have been among those targeted by immigration enforcement officials since the Trump administration intensified deportation efforts.
Following raids in California last month, farmers reported that between 30% to 60% of their workers stopped showing up to work amid fears they could be arrested next.
Those fears are also pertinent in Hidalgo County — the majority of which lies in De La Cruz’s district — where about 80% of workers are undocumented, according to a report by the National Center for Farmworker Health. Only two workers surveyed in the report had an H-2A visa.
Amid rising concerns within the agricultural industry, President Donald Trump expressed support for reforming the H-2A program and announced a plan to streamline the issuance of temporary worker visas.
De La Cruz’s bill would create an online portal for agriculture employers to post job openings or file petitions to bring in temporary workers; extend H-2A visa worker contracts from 10 months to a year; and expand the program to include greenhouses and indoor farms as qualified employers.
It would also launch a six-year pilot program allowing workers to freely move between jobs within the same state while their visa lasts. A worker under this program would be known as a portable H-2A worker.
If their job ends, they would have 60 days to find another one with a registered agriculture employer or be required to leave the country.
The law would require that no more than 10,000 portable H-2A visas are active at any given time. However, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security could further limit the number of visas if there aren’t enough registered agriculture employers or job openings.
