Texas lawmaker proposes beefing up temporary worker program to ease farm labor shortages

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McALLEN — U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz filed legislation Monday that would revamp a temporary worker program to help ease farm labor shortages largely provoked by the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration raids targeting undocumented workers.

De La Cruz, a Republican from Edinburg, introduced the Bracero Program 2.0 Act on Monday, a bill that makes changes to a temporary visa program for agriculture workers, known as H-2A visas.

The proposal would raise wages for program participants, streamline the application process for employers, and launch a regional pilot program that would allow workers to change jobs within a state without having to reapply for a visa.

"This will provide solutions desperately needed for hard-working immigrants. With workforce shortages challenging our communities, the Bracero Program 2.0 will bring stability and certainty for South Texas," De La Cruz said in a statement.

Farmworkers have been among those targeted by immigration enforcement officials since the Trump administration intensified deportation efforts.

Following raids in California last month, farmers reported that between 30% to 60% of their workers stopped showing up to work amid fears they could be arrested next.

Those fears are also pertinent in Hidalgo County — the majority of which lies in De La Cruz’s district — where about 80% of workers are undocumented, according to a report by the National Center for Farmworker Health. Only two workers surveyed in the report had an H-2A visa.

Amid rising concerns within the agricultural industry, President Donald Trump expressed support for reforming the H-2A program and announced a plan to streamline the issuance of temporary worker visas.

De La Cruz’s bill would create an online portal for agriculture employers to post job openings or file petitions to bring in temporary workers; extend H-2A visa worker contracts from 10 months to a year; and expand the program to include greenhouses and indoor farms as qualified employers.

It would also launch a six-year pilot program allowing workers to freely move between jobs within the same state while their visa lasts. A worker under this program would be known as a portable H-2A worker.

If their job ends, they would have 60 days to find another one with a registered agriculture employer or be required to leave the country.

The law would require that no more than 10,000 portable H-2A visas are active at any given time. However, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security could further limit the number of visas if there aren't enough registered agriculture employers or job openings.

All H-2A workers would have to be paid a wage that matches the minimum wage of the state they're employed in, plus $2 per hour.

Laramie Adams, government affairs director for the Texas Farm Bureau, said he supported a more streamlined application, saying the current process of matching up with H-2A workers is cumbersome.

Employers have to submit paper applications and supporting documents. If a state or federal agency requires more information from an employer, the agencies often mail their requests rather than sending an email, leading to a lengthy back-and-forth, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

And employers who need workers at different parts of a season must go through the entire process again.

"The main thing that we advocate for is a strong, legal agriculture workforce, and it's been hard to navigate the current H-2A process to ensure that we have a reliable workforce," Adams said. "At the same time, we have a lot more Texans who are using the program because it's their only avenue to be able to get seasonal agricultural workers."

The bill is named after a temporary labor program between the U.S. and Mexico that ran from 1942 until 1964. The Bracero program — meaning "arm man" or manual laborer in Spanish — was meant to provide a legal way to temporarily hire Mexican migrant farmworkers along the southern border.

"For decades, the Bracero Program created new opportunities for millions and provided critical support for Texas agriculture," De La Cruz said in a statement.

The program ended because of tensions with the farm labor unions, which accused agriculture employers of using bracero workers as cheap labor that put U.S. workers at a disadvantage, according to Mayra Avila, a lecturer at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

She said labor shortages in the agriculture sector have existed for years, but recent immigration arrests targeting immigrant farmworkers have magnified the need for labor.

But Avila questioned whether changes like those proposed in De La Cruz's bill would address the shortages, noting that the undocumented workers being arrested are not eligible for H-2A visas.

"You have to have a clean record," Avila said.

Lawmakers have repeatedly tried to reform the H-2A program over the years, including one attempt in 2021 that would have created a path to legal status for undocumented farmworkers. De La Cruz’s bill contains no such provision.

Though it’s unclear whether De La Cruz’s bill will garner strong support, the legislation signals a desire among Republicans to establish a framework to allow more migrant farmworkers to work in the country legally.

"The reality is that you're getting rid of a lot of farmworker laborers, and farm work is very hard work," Avila said.

She said the U.S. relies too heavily on farmworkers and that it would be difficult to fill those jobs with U.S. citizens.

"As a U.S. citizen, you would rather get a job at McDonald's with air conditioning, or a Walmart with air conditioning, than go work in the fields where, in Texas, it's 90 degrees," she said. "Why would you do this to yourself? It's back-breaking."

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

Disclosure: Texas Farm Bureau has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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