Trump Cut H-2A Wages. Courts Backed It. Dairy Workers Are Organizing.

On June 15, farmworkers and their advocates in New York gathered to push for legislation to fight exploitation at the state’s dairy farms, “We Came Here to Work With Dignity,” the headline read, in Documented, a New York immigration news outlet.

That slogan lands differently when you know what’s happened to H-2A farmworker wages over the past eight months.

The Cuts

In April, the Trump administration slashed the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) — the federally mandated wage floor for H-2A agricultural guest workers — by up to $5 per hour in some states, Farm Progress reported. The AEWR exists to ensure that the H-2A program doesn’t undercut domestic farmworkers’ wages; by design, cutting it hurts both.

A separate rule change compounded the reduction. Under new federal policy, employers who provide housing can deduct $2 to $3 per hour from workers’ base pay, the Colorado Sun reported. On H-2A assignments, where employer-provided housing is common and often a condition of the job, this effectively means the wage cut runs deeper than the headline number.

Unusual Opposition

The politics around this were odd. NPR reported in April that both unions and “America First” conservatives opposed the H-2A wage changes. The left’s objection: worker exploitation. The right’s: lower H-2A wage floors still undercut American farmworkers competing in the same labor markets, regardless of the guest worker program’s legal floor.

That rare alignment didn’t stop the administration.

Courts Sided With the Administration

Advocates and unions challenged the cuts in federal court. In May, a judge declined to block the new lower wage rules, Courthouse News reported. Separately, a judge rejected the United Farm Workers’ bid to shelve the new wage scale, Capital Press reported. Days after that, a federal court upheld the revised H-2A wage rules outright, Hoosier Ag Today reported.

Three rulings. Three losses for workers. The legal route is closed, at least for now.

Farms Depend on This Program More Than Ever

The New York Times reported this month that American farms depend more than ever on the troubled H-2A program, with certifications growing year over year as the domestic farm labor pool shrinks. Dairy is a particularly sharp case: the cows need milking twice a day, every day, 365 days a year. Seasonal labor flows don’t map onto that schedule. Year-round immigrant labor does.

That dependence creates a structural bind. When federal wage protections erode and courts won’t intervene, workers on H-2A visas face a narrower set of options than workers in other sectors. They’re tied to a single employer. Their legal status in the country depends on that relationship. Speaking up about wage theft or dangerous conditions carries a risk that a domestic worker doesn’t face.

The visa’s tied-employer structure hasn’t changed. What changed is the wage floor beneath it.

The State-Level Response

New York has historically done more for farmworkers than most states. The Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act, signed in 2019, gave agricultural workers in the state overtime rights, the right to organize, and access to workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance — protections that farmworkers in most U.S. states still lack.

The June 15 rally signals that those protections aren’t enough, particularly for workers on federal H-2A visas whose situation has materially worsened since April. The workers and advocates who showed up to Albany are pushing for additional state-level legislation to address exploitation at dairy operations, per Documented.

Nationally, a congressional reform bill aimed at H-2A was circulating in Washington as of mid-June, FreshPlaza reported. Reform proposals in recent sessions have focused on making visas portable — letting workers move between employers without losing legal status — and tightening housing standards enforcement. Portability, if it passed, would fundamentally alter the program’s power dynamic.

Whether Congress acts before another harvest cycle turns is a different question.

What This Amounts To

Eight months ago, H-2A farmworkers had certain guaranteed minimum wages. Today those minimums are lower, a housing deduction rule compounds the cut for many workers, and three federal court rulings have refused to block the changes. The workers rallying in Albany are pushing for state protection because federal protection has been stripped.

Their message was simple: they came here to work with dignity. The federal government just made that harder. The state is the next place to ask.

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Earlier coverage on this beat: heat exposure risks facing H-2A farmworkers on summer assignments and how meatpacker consolidation compresses wages across the livestock chain. The Chapter 12 bankruptcy surge on American farms shows the financial squeeze on employers that makes every labor negotiation harder.