Trump administration slashes Georgia migrant farmworker H-2A wages

In response, a coalition of farmworkers, including one based in Georgia, filed suit last month in federal court. Their argument: Cutting H-2A wages will also trigger a cut in the pay and standard of living of U.S. agricultural workers.

The Trump wage cuts are “a huge gift to Big Ag corporations,” said Diego Iniguez-Lopez, government affairs director for the UFW Foundation, a farmworker advocacy group and a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Chris Butts, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, described the cuts as a necessary corrective following years of sizable increases.

The minimum hourly wage for H-2A workers in Georgia rose from $11.99 in 2022 to $13.67 in 2023 and $14.68 in 2024, before reaching $16.08 earlier this year.

Those increases “outpaced inflation and cost of living adjustments from other programs like social security” and resulted in a wage that was more than two times the federal minimum wage, Butts said in a statement, adding that the new rate is “more market driven.”

But labor cost savings to farmers are difficult to predict, Butts said, because “many growers, in order to attract skilled and returning workers, will elect to pay more than the base rate.”

How big is the H-2A program in Georgia?

In the first three quarters of the 2025 fiscal year, Georgia welcomed 35,223 H-2A workers, second only to Florida’s 36,232.

That’s a familiar position for the state. Georgia was a top-two destination state for H-2A farmworkers for six of the past eight years.

The program’s explosive growth nationwide has been reflected locally.

In 2024, Georgia received a peak of 43,436 H-2A farmworkers, up from 10,387 just 10 years prior. As the program has grown, industry groups and experts have told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the H-2A visa has become growers’ only source of dependable labor.

According to Cesar Escalante, a professor in the University of Georgia’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Georgia takes in a disproportionately large number of H-2A workers relative to other, bigger states. That’s due, in part, to Georgia farms producing more labor-intensive crops, Escalante said.

Many are small and medium-sized operations that can’t afford to turn to mechanization as an alternative to bringing guest workers in, he said.

The H-2A program is meant to be a tool of last resort for employers who cannot fill open positions with domestic workers.

To ensure foreign guest workers don’t take jobs from Americans, the cost of participating in the H-2A program is, by design, high. Employers must cover workers’ travel to the U.S., as well as their housing and their daily transportation to the fields.

Hourly wages must be high enough to avoid undercutting local workers (and employers may not pay U.S. workers less than the H-2A wage).

Why did the Trump administration cut H-2A wages?

The U.S. Department of Labor, the agency responsible for setting H-2A wages, did not respond to a request for comment from the AJC, deferring instead to the text of the federal rule that brought on the pay cuts.

In its rule, the administration argues that H-2A wages had become “unreasonably high,” causing labor costs to compromise the “international competitive position of U.S. agriculture.” There is also concern expressed over a big and growing labor shortage in agriculture, exacerbated by the ongoing surge in immigration arrests and deportations under Trump.

Citing federal data, the administration notes that more than 40% of crop workers nationwide lack authorization to live and work in the U.S. — a hefty slice of the overall workforce but one that is likely becoming smaller as Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests ramp up.

“The current and imminent labor shortage exacerbated by the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens, increased enforcement of existing immigration law, and global competitiveness pressures … presents a sufficient risk of supply shock-induced food shortages to justify” cutting the wages of farmworkers who come in via the H-2A visa, the administration wrote.

As labor needs become harder to fill, the administration foresees growers making bigger use of the H-2A program, in part because it does not expect U.S. workers to fill the openings created because of increased deportations.

Credit: Brant Sanderlin/AJC

Credit: Brant Sanderlin/AJC

“Agricultural work remains physically demanding, often takes place in remote locations, carries health and safety risks, and typically lacks advancement opportunities — factors that continue to discourage participation by the domestic workforce,” the administration wrote.

There has been bipartisan political support in Georgia to keep a lid on H-2A wages.

Last year, Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper called for an H-2A wage freeze, writing that, for Georgia farms, the labor program is “quickly reaching a breaking point where the cost of using the program significantly outweighs its benefits.”

In 2023, all of Georgia’s Republican members of the U.S. House signed a letter expressing concern over that year’s planned wage hike. And Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff introduced a bill that sought to temporarily freeze the H-2A minimum wage to 2022 levels, citing a “sudden and massive increase in costs.”

Critics foresee lower wages for all, more abuse

The lawsuit aiming to block the Trump administration’s wage cuts argues that the change to the H-2A program poses a threat to farmworker livelihoods. That’s because the H-2A minimum wage also functionally dictates how much domestic farmworkers earn, since growers can’t pay them less than foreign guest workers.

“Instead of actually complying with the statutory obligation to ensure that the H-2A program does not adversely affect U.S. workers, it’s going the opposite route,” Iniguez-Lopez said. “It’s going to force Georgia farmworkers and others across the country to take second jobs, make cuts to groceries, gas and other necessities.

“And this is already a population that has far too much exposure to food insecurity and poverty, and these wage cuts will deepen that.”

According to Iniguez-Lopez, it is also possible that fewer foreign workers will want to apply for H-2A visas given the pay reductions, which would make agricultural labor even harder to come by.

“A basic economic principle is that if you’re facing labor shortages, what you should do is increase wages, not decrease them,” he said.

If the administration is right and the program does continue to grow despite lower wages, that could generate its own set of negative repercussions. The government forecasts an expansion of about 80,000 H-2A visa holders nationwide in the next 10 years.

Because H-2A workers cannot easily leave bad employers without losing their legal status, labor abuse is common.

In recent years, South Georgia made national news when federal investigators uncovered a criminal ring that allegedly subjected H-2A workers to “modern-day slavery,” with migrants being forced to dig for onions with their bare hands under the threat of gun violence.

The AJC has reported on claims that contractors hired by farmers to find H-2A workers are charging illegal recruitment fees, putting workers in debt and making them vulnerable to abuse. Exploitation could become more common if the number of workers grows without increased resources set aside to enforce their rights.

“It’s unfortunately going to increase the abuse, the human labor trafficking, the wage theft, and a lot of the far too common abuse and exploitation that we see in the history of the program,” Iniguez-Lopez said.

Prior to cutting H-2A wages, the Trump administration also scrapped a new rule implemented under President Joe Biden that allowed farmworkers to organize. The rule, which the Department of Labor deemed “burdensome,” also included protections against human trafficking, retaliation and recruitment fraud.