TrixyKnitter
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TrixyKnitter
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Reposted by TrixyKnitter
ddayen.bsky.social
This is all bullshit, by the way. There is no imminent risk of rotting crops, according to experts and farmworker unions. It's a ploy to cut wages (even below state minimum wages) for foreign workers, which will eventually hit U.S. workers too.
So much for America First!
Trump Labor Department Says His Immigration Raids Are Causing a Food Crisis
In a filing in the Federal Register, the Labor Department argues there are “immediate dangers to the American food supply” due to a lack of migrant agricultural workers.
prospect.org
October 8, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by TrixyKnitter
ddayen.bsky.social
I mean read this, the Trump administration in an official document is saying that Americans won't ever pick crops and America won't have enough food to eat because of ICE raids!
prospect.org/politics/tru...
As a result, employers are facing significant economic harms, the filing claims. And incredibly, given the administration’s unceasing rhetoric to the contrary, the Labor Department definitively rejects the idea of Americans replacing the missing workers. “The Department does not believe American workers currently unemployed or marginally employed will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace large numbers of aliens,” the filing states, adding that agricultural work involves “a distinct set of skills and is among the most physically demanding and hazardous occupations in the U.S. labor market.” (For what it’s worth, nearly half of all agricultural workers are native-born, and significantly more than half are U.S. citizens, according to Department of Agriculture data.) The Labor Department even claims that broadly advertising agricultural jobs, which is required under the H2-A rules, has not led to a boost in applications from U.S. workers. This is a bit of a fiction; workers who apply often do not receive jobs, and nobody is really checking to see if applications are coming in. “The system isn’t set up to prove that there’s a labor shortage of U.S. workers,” said Costa, of EPI. In the end, the Labor Department concludes, the only way to protect agricultural employers from disaster and consumers from rising prices and food shortages is to slash wages in the H-2A program to make it more viable to bring in workers. This is an odd response to a workforce crisis, since cutting wages across the sector will likely drive existing workers to look elsewhere for jobs. In fact, farm employers in Florida fear that H-2A foreign workers won’t apply for these jobs anymore because the wages are so low. (There were 384,900 H-2A applications last year.) But the filing states, “Without swift action, agricultural employers will be unable to maintain operations, and the nation's food supply will be at risk.”
October 8, 2025 at 1:17 PM