The American Farm Bureau Federation is strongly backing the newly introduced Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026. This legislation aims to overhaul the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program by expanding access to a near year-round foreign workforce, capping fees, stabilizing (read: suppressing) wage rates through the Adverse Effect Wage Rate methodology, and making it easier and cheaper for employers to import labor.
On the surface, it sounds like relief for farmers facing labor shortages. In reality, this bill doubles down on a failed strategy of flooding the labor market with more immigrants instead of fixing the underlying problems. Conservative rural Americans, especially those who value self-reliance, strong communities, and secure borders, should reject this approach. It benefits corporate agribusiness far more than family farms and avoids the real reforms we need.
The Numbers Do Not Add Up for Endless Immigration
Proponents claim there simply are not enough Americans willing to do farm work. Yet the United States already has millions of legal immigrants and a significant illegal immigrant population, many of whom work in agriculture and related sectors. Despite record H-2A visa usage (approaching 400,000 positions certified in recent years), shortages persist in fields and processing plants.
If importing hundreds of thousands of guest workers year after year has not solved the problem, why would expanding the program to more sectors like dairy, aquaculture, and controlled environment agriculture with contracts up to 350 days fix it? The supply of willing domestic workers has not magically dried up because Americans are lazy. It has everything to do with compensation and conditions.
Americans Avoid These Jobs for a Reason
Farm work is physically demanding, often in extreme heat, cold, or dust, with long hours, seasonal uncertainty, and limited benefits. Pay in many cases remains garbage relative to the difficulty, risk, and lifestyle disruption. When wages are suppressed by an endless pipeline of foreign guest workers who are tied to a single employer and often housed on-site, there is little incentive for businesses to raise pay or improve conditions to attract Americans, including young people, veterans, or rural workers seeking steady employment.
The Farm Bureau itself notes that only a tiny fraction of domestic applications come in for advertised positions. That is not proof that Americans refuse to work. It is proof that the current wage structure, propped up by cheap foreign labor, does not compete with other available jobs. Expanding H-2A simply entrenches this dynamic rather than forcing a market correction.
Big Agribusiness Wins, Family Farms Get Scraps
Large-scale operations with the resources to navigate bureaucracy, provide housing, and manage large crews of H-2A workers stand to gain the most. They can scale production while keeping labor costs predictable and low. Smaller family farms often struggle with the paperwork, housing requirements, and fees even under the current system. This bill may lower some barriers, but it tilts the playing field further toward consolidated corporate agriculture that already dominates much of the sector.
Rural communities suffer when the workforce consists of transient guest workers who do not put down roots, spend locally in the same way, or contribute to schools and civic life over the long term. Stable, well-paid American workers build stronger towns.
The System Is Broken. Importing More Workers Does Not Fix It
If a farm business cannot afford to pay a living wage that attracts American workers for essential food production, then the business model needs reform, not a government-backed import program. Food security is national security. We should not base it on dependency on foreign labor that can be disrupted by policy changes, legal challenges, or international events.
Better solutions exist:
- Targeted subsidies or tax credits for employers who hire and retain American workers at competitive wages. This directly incentivizes domestic employment without expanding immigration.
- Heavy investment in automation, robotics, and technology. Mechanization has already transformed many aspects of agriculture. Doubling down here creates high-skill jobs, reduces physical strain, and decreases long-term reliance on manual labor. Countries facing similar demographics are pursuing this path aggressively.
- Wage and condition improvements combined with enforcement of immigration laws to tighten the labor market. When the supply of alternative low-wage workers shrinks, businesses adapt by paying more or innovating.
The whole agricultural labor system is distorted. Patching it with more guest workers kicks the can down the road and imports the very border and wage pressures that many rural conservatives have opposed for years.
Rural Americans Deserve Better
Conservative rural voters understand the importance of secure borders, American workers first, and free-market principles that reward productivity rather than endless cheap labor subsidies. This bill fails those tests. It expands a guest worker program, potentially includes pathways or stabilization for existing unauthorized workers in some versions of these efforts, and prioritizes industry convenience over systemic fixes. Even “liberal” Americans should understand this, and they once did, when they cared more about working-class Americans than erasing all borders and destroying our culture.
We do not need the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act. What we need is courage to address root causes: uncompetitive wages for tough jobs, over-reliance on immigration as a crutch, and insufficient innovation. Family farms and rural communities thrive when Americans are employed in dignified, fairly compensated work, not when big agribusiness gains access to a larger, more pliable workforce.
Congress should scrap this bill and pursue policies that strengthen American labor, reward innovation, and preserve the character of our farming heartland. Food production is too important to gamble on open-ended immigration.