Together with U.S. citizens, immigrant farmworkers help bring food to our tables and provide needed assistance to American farmers. These workers show up day after day to help with the essential work of feeding the nation.
Background
- Foreign-born farmworkers make up as much as 68% of America’s total farmworker workforce and contribute significantly both on the farm and outside the farm gate.
- Undocumented farmworkers are important members of our communities. The majority of undocumented farmworkers have been living in the U.S. for over 10 years. Almost 65% of current undocumented farmworkers are parents, and many of their children were born in America and are already U.S. citizens.
- Even when taking into account the vital contributions of the undocumented workforce, the American agriculture industry needs more workers. Farmworker shortages have resulted in rising food prices for consumers and as much as three billion dollars in missed GDP growth.
- More than 40% of farmers are unable to obtain the necessary workers for the production of their main crop. In 2019, farms in Idaho had 1,000 open positions on offer at almost double the state minimum wage. According to state workforce data, just five American workers applied for the positions.
- With a growing labor shortage, farmers have naturally turned to the legal immigration system as a potential solution. But the temporary H-2A agricultural guestworker program has been an increasingly cumbersome, outdated, and expensive process for farmers that cuts into already slim margins.
- The country relies on undocumented farmworkers for its food supply, and the essential, difficult nature of their work means there are no simple fixes. Growers and farmworker advocates, typically opposed, have together made it clear that a legislative solution to legalize undocumented workers and reform the H-2A program is urgently needed.
Advocate for Farmers and Farmworkers
Contacting your member of Congress and/or their staff is one of the most effective ways to share your views on the need to pass a legislative solution for farms and immigrant farmworkers. Below is guidance on writing to or meeting with your Member of Congress and/or their staff about a legislative solution for the farm workforce.
Ask Your Members of Congress to Support a Solution for Farmworkers. Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives that would modernize the H-2A visa program and address important workforce needs. Take action and tell your Representatives and Senators to pass a permanent solution for the farm workforce.
You can also look up your members of Congress and call them to let them know you support a bipartisan legislative immigration reform to address agricultural workforce needs.
House of Representatives: Find Your Representative
Senate: How to Contact U.S. Senators
Resources
Forum Statement for the Record – “Immigrant Farmworkers Are Essential to Feeding America.” This Forum statement for the record for a 2021 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing discussed the importance of the farm workforce for the nation’s food supply chain and agricultural economic prosperity.
America’s Worker Shortages in the Agriculture and Food Industries: Direct Impact on Food Waste and Inflation discusses the impact on agriculture and food sector labor shortages have on inflation, food waste, and other factors and raises potential policy solutions.
U.S. Workforce Challenges: How Immigration Enforcement Is Impacting the American Economy examines the economic impact of recent immigration enforcement policies, with a focus on the labor market implications of workforce losses across key sectors, including agriculture, construction, and the hospitality industry. It also reviews immigrants’ fiscal contributions and evaluates the broader demographic implications of a declining immigrant population amid heightened enforcement and sharply reduced irregular migration.
Infographic: Who Are American Farmworkers? provides demographic and population statistics on American farmworkers, 87% of whom are immigrants. It also provides information about undocumented farmworkers and the temporary H-2A agricultural worker visa program.
The Economic Impact of Undocumented Farmworkers provides information about the contributions of undocumented farmworkers both on the farm and outside the farm gate.
Agriculture Sector: Immigrants Are Indispensable to the U.S. Workforce further highlights the role of immigrants in the agriculture sector, including key facts about their demographics and contributions.
Bipartisanship Isn’t Dead is a short video featuring Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-California) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) discussing why bipartisan agriculture-based immigration reform is not only possible but necessary.
Immigrant Workers and American Food Production: Five Things to Know provides additional information about immigrant farmworkers, highlighting their essential role during the Covid-19 pandemic and the sharply increasing demand for H-2A workers.
How We Compromised to Help America’s Farms describes how the situation on America’s farms has led to agreement from both Democrats and Republicans on the need for a new way forward.
Key Legislation Pending in Congress
In 2026, a group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives introduced the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026 (H.R. 9535), a bipartisan bill that would make substantial changes to the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program. Commonly referred to as SAWA, the bill would simplify the H-2A application process, expand the definition of agricultural labor covered by the program, and waive certain grounds of inadmissibility and deportability that could otherwise prevent experienced agricultural workers from obtaining H-2A status.
In previous recent congresses, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act (H.R. 5038) was introduced as a bipartisan effort to provide a legislative solution in this area, but fell short of enactment despite passing the House of Representatives with bipartisan support in late 2019.