PRESS STATEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 26, 2025
CONTACT
Francisco Díaz, francisco@cdmigrante.org
This week, House Appropriations Committee members backed an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security funding bill that would dramatically expand H-2 guestworker programs, a move that is not only incredibly shortsighted but also dangerous to hundreds of thousands of guestworkers.
Guestworkers in the agriculture, seafood, and fair/carnival industries and beyond can’t leave abusive workplaces because their visas tie them to their employers. They often cannot access legal services due to restrictions on legal aid organizations. Many don’t have legal protections for organizing. They face wage theft, retaliation, violence, discrimination and even human trafficking at truly alarming rates.
Expanding the number of available visas without strengthening protections for workers and guaranteeing oversight is irresponsible and unconscionable.
To make matters worse, this move to expand guestworker programs arrives just a few days after the Trump administration announced it would suspend enforcement of a 2024 rule that provided crucial and life-saving worker protections in the H-2A agricultural visa program.
The reckless expansion of guestworker programs is a band-aid to the absolute havoc brought on by the Trump administration’s workplace raids that have left many industries dealing with exacerbated labor shortages. It is essentially privatizing our immigration system, bestowing undue power on big corporations to have a final say in who is allowed into the country.
We need real solutions that advance freedom, safety and wellbeing for all workers, families and communities. We need people-centered solutions that provide safety and permanence for members of our communities as well as internationally recruited workers who contribute every year to our shared prosperity . We can’t keep carving out specific industry loopholes or coming up with unwise band-aid “solutions” that put workers at further risk of abuse and exploitation. We need to advance a migration and immigration model that respects the human rights of workers, keeps families and communities whole, and reflects the voices and experiences of migrants and immigrants.