Temporary foreign farmworkers in Washington state face wage cuts of more than $3 an hour under policy changes by the Trump administration earlier this month for those with temporary visas to work in agriculture.
The White House announced regulatory changes Oct. 2 to the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, which sets the minimum wage employers must pay temporary foreign agricultural workers under the H-2A program. The change followed the August cancellation of the Farm Labor Survey, which previously provided the data used to determine employment and wage estimates.
The AEWR will now be calculated using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, which collects wage and employment information across a wide range of occupations and industries rather than focusing on farm labor.
“The Trump wage cut is a catastrophe for American workers in agriculture who growers intend to replace with cheap and exploitable foreign guest workers,” Teresa Romero, President of the United Farm Workers, said in a news release. “When guest worker wages are lowered, it is American jobs that are lost.”
The H-2A visa program established in 1986, allows foreign workers, mainly from Mexico, to come to the United States temporarily to fill agricultural jobs. As of June, there were about 28,000 approved H-2A workers in Washington state.
At the beginning of 2025, Washington’s AEWR was $19.82 an hour. Under the new rule, that rate will fall to $16.53 for entry-level farmworkers and $19 for skilled workers.
“Everything is so expensive,” said Crisanto Serrano, a farmworker and U.S. citizen from Sunnyside. “If they pay us less, it’s going to be worse.”
Employers who provide housing to H-2A workers will also be allowed to deduct $2.49 per hour for housing costs in Washington state. This means that some farmworkers could take home around $14 per hour, nearly $6 less than in previous seasons. This marks the first time H-2A workers will have to pay for employer-provided housing, which had previously been required to be free under federal law.
Even with the new rule, employers must pay whichever rate is highest: the AEWR, the prevailing wage, a collective bargaining rate, or the federal or state minimum wage.
Antonio De Loera-Brust, communications director for United Farm Workers said the possibility of replacing local workers with foreign labor will negatively affect rural communities.
“They’re exchanging basically the undocumented population for a guest worker population that has even less rights and will be cheaper to exploit than ever,” De Loera-Brust said.
Enrique Gastelum, CEO of the Worker and Farm Labor Association, said the Trump administration’s policy change will help “reset” the system by recognizing skill levels and balancing wages between H-2A and domestic workers.
“Imagine you’re running a household, and your costs go up for five years, 10% per year, but your job and your wages that you’re stuck in are only going up by 1% a year,” Gastelum said. “Eventually, you’re going to get up to a point of no return where you can’t pay your bills, and that is why farms have been closing. They literally can no longer pay their bills.”
He also said the changes align with the Trump administration’s goal of building a legal agricultural workforce in the United States. By making these policy changes, he said, farms will have greater access to legal guest workers through the H-2A program.
Since April, the association has received inquiries from about 30 farms across Washington and Oregon interested in hiring H-2A workers and that have not been part of the program before, he said. Some of those farms are located in Wenatchee, Moses Lake and Walla Walla.
“A small farmer in the Walla Walla area was like, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of bringing two workers.’ So some people are even thinking just a small number like that, right? They don’t all come in hundreds or thousands,” Gastelum said.
Pay cuts: What it means for workers and the market
Serrano, the farmworker from Sunnyside, said he did not learn about the changes until moments before aninterview with The Spokesman-Review. He is worried about losing his job if they decide to replace local workers with people from the H-2A program.
But his biggest concern, he said, is how he will be able to cover his expenses – and if wages are cut, he may have to look for other types of work.
“It makes us, as U.S. citizens, feel bad when they say we don’t want to do these jobs,” Serrano said. “Where I work, there are white Americans out in the fields doing the hard work.”
Three-quarters of domestic farmworkers struggle to afford food “sometimes” or more frequently, according to a 2025 report by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. Half of H-2A workers reported struggling to find housing and afford food every week.
Still, Jeffrey Luckstead, a professor of economics at Washington State University, said that based on a survey he co-authored with other agricultural economists, the majority of the 154 H-2A workers polled in Washington would take the job even if their wages were lowered.
Through the survey, conducted before 2023 and published in September 2024, Luckstead said the research estimated a reservation wage of about $8.94 per hour, meaning most workers would likely continue accepting H-2A jobs.
“But if the adverse effective wage rate starts getting closer and closer to the reservation wage rate, we might see some immigrants not accepting these jobs,” he said.
Lower farm wages do not always lead to lower fruit and vegetable prices, Luckstead said.
“It might not actually show up if farmers have been having their profits cut into with higher wages over time; they may just take this and increase their profit margin and not actually pass this on to consumers, in terms of lower prices,” Luckstead said.
“It’s complicated, because growers themselves don’t sell directly to consumers,” he continued. “They usually sell to a packing house, and the packing house contracts with the supermarkets. And so there’s a chain of events that occurs. Some farmers do both. A lot of them don’t.”
Luckstead said he doesn’t expect any immediate changes for this year’s crop – and next year remains uncertain.
“From what I’ve heard, the bigger issue this year is they’ve had a very good growing season, very good weather, and they have too many apples, so the price might go down because of the oversupply,” Luckstead said.
Housing crunch could slow H-2A program expansion
De-Loera Brust said beyond the policy changes in the H-2A program, housing would be the first and biggest obstacle if more H-2A workers were requested.
“The rules of the program require workers to be provided housing. Already, many growers cut costs by providing cramped, unsanitary, and inadequate housing,” De Loera-Brust said.
Gastelum agreed, emphasizing that it’s likely over the next three years, Washington state could end up seeing an uptick in H-2A workers, but the question is, “Do they have housing they can furnish to the workers?”
He said housing has to be licensed by the Washington State Department of Health.
“And if you can’t get the housing with licensed beds, you’re not bringing workers; you’re not using the program,” Gastelum said.
Zach Williams, human resources director for Stemilt Growers, said at least for their company, there are no plans to change the number of H-2A workers they employ.
The company has housing locations across Eastern Washington – including in Wenatchee, Quincy, Mattawa and Brewster – all of which are near capacity, he said.
While costs to bring H-2A workers have been expensive, it hasn’t stopped them from requesting the workers they need.
Regardless, he said this is a positive policy for growers.
“The costs have skyrocketed over the last 10 to 15 years, and labor has been the huge increase in production costs,” Williams said. “So lowering that down is, for sure, going to make it hopefully be affordable to pick the crop.”
De Loera-Brust said the H-2A program has long been a “recipe for abuse,” with years of low wages and constant complaints from employers about labor costs. He said that cutting wages will have serious consequences, not just for workers’ paychecks, but for the future of the Washington agriculture industry.
“In our position, rather than import new workers who are going to be treated and paid poorly, why don’t we actually do right by the people who are already here?” De Loera-Brust said. “There’s a way to get to a 100% American workforce.”
“Legalize the people who are already here,” he said. “Let them become Americans.”
