Farm Workers Welcome H-2A Visa Cap Legislation to Protect U.S. Wages and Jobs
Washington, D.C.—Today, Representative and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, Primila Jayapal (D-Wash.), alongside Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Speaker Emerita, Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.), Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.), and Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) introduced the Protect U.S. Workers Act of 2026.
The Act would institute an annual visa cap on the H-2A agricultural visa program for the first time, setting it at 400,000 guest worker visas a year. Currently, the H-2A agricultural guest worker program is uncapped and has ballooned in size—growing more than seven times larger than the number of visas issued in 2005. The Protect U.S. Workers Act comes after the United Farm Workers, UFW Foundation, and 18 individual farm workers’ lawsuit against the Trump administration’s arbitrary wage cut rule that reduces wages for H-2A workers and U.S. farm workers alike. The Trump administration’s own estimates indicate that the rule will expand the uncapped H-2A program to over 514,000 visas a year.
The runaway growth of the H-2A program has had a disastrous impact on U.S. farm workers’ wages and jobs, with cases of local workers being illegally fired to make way for H-2A guest workers, resulting in gender and age discrimination. Additionally, the expansion of the H-2A guestworker program has exceeded the federal government’s ability to properly regulate it, resulting in numerous incidents of human trafficking, forced labor, sexual violence, wage theft, unsafe housing conditions, and other human rights abuses. The Protect U.S. Workers Act will contain the dangerous growth of the exploitative H-2A program and protect U.S. farm workers’ jobs and wages.
“The trafficking, abuse, and exploitation exposed within the H-2A guest worker program should anger every American,” said UFW President Teresa Romero. “Yet this uncapped guest worker program continues to grow—undercutting local wages and jobs. This common sense legislation will impose a numerical cap on the H-2A guest worker program for the first time, stabilizing the runaway growth of the H-2A program in line with its original statutory intent. This bill is necessary to create an agricultural labor market more conducive to the needs of the farm workers who are already here and have been feeding America for decades.”
“As we challenge the Trump administration in court over farm worker wage cuts and H-2A expansion, we critically need accountability over an H-2A program that has long displaced U.S. workers and has been plagued with abuse,” said UFW Foundation CEO Erica Lomeli Corcoran. “The explosive growth of the program over the last several years has been a tool for corporate greed and threatens to drive down the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers. Rep. Jayapal’s Protect U.S. Workers Act introduces a common-sense safeguard against H-2A employers undercutting the wages and jobs of those U.S. workers.”
In addition to the UFW and UFW Foundation, the bill is endorsed by the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), CASA, Farmworker Association of Florida, and Farm Labor Organizing Committee.
Bill text is available here.
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