Original article on Northwest Public Broadcasting

Original article in the Yakima Herald-Republic

Original article in the Wenatchee World

By Johanna Bejarano and Renee Diaz

Blaine Smith is a second generation orchardist who grows cherries, pears and apples in Monitor, Wash., a small unincorporated town full of orchards. He relies on both domestic employees and H-2A guest workers to bring in the harvest.

Smith said labor has been tight this year, and said he needs every worker he can get. Growers and farmworkers alike worry that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could disrupt the harvest, he said.

“I think everybody has been afraid of what’s going on with ICE. We’re afraid, too, that we won’t have pickers, and people won’t travel. Usually we have a lot of migrants that come up from California. We all have been afraid they won’t show up,” said Smith.

As immigration policies change, farmers are turning to a guest worker program known as the H-2A visa program, an option allowing farmers to legally hire workers from other countries. As immigration detentions ramp up, concerns grow among employers and domestic workers.

Lack of labor leaves fruit unpicked

Another farmer, Ben Buchholz, is also dealing with a lack of workers in Wapato, more than 100 miles south of Monitor. His family farm has been producing cherries, pears and apples since the 1920s. When the cherry harvest ended, he said he didn’t have enough people to pick them all.

Washington state’s agricultural sector currently generates more than $12.8 billion annually, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. About 78% of Washington farms are operated by families and small growers like Buchholz.

“We probably left about 15% to 20% on the tree this year because they got soft towards the end of harvest,” Buchholz said.

He said that for years, his farm hired local workers, but there are fewer and fewer of them.

“ We're running into a place where we used to hire 60 migrant labor individuals that were coming from Mexico, and then going back. Now, we can maybe get 25, and this year we even had less than 25,” Buchholz said.

His farm is small. He said he employs local workers because the H-2A program is too expensive for him.

While H-2A workers are authorized to work legally in the U.S., many workers — both with visas and undocumented — are on edge.

Enrique Gastelum is executive director of the Worker and Farmer Labor Association (WAFLA), an organization that coordinates H-2A labor contracts across the state. He said no widespread raids have happened in Washington. However, targeted detentions and social media misinformation are fueling fear.

“When you start using words like mass deportation and workplace raids, that starts to create some uneasiness,” Gastelum said.

The state has seen targeted individual detentions rise. In the first five months of the Trump presidency ICE arrests jumped 35%.

U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican who represents Central Washington acknowledges the feelings of fear.

“It’s having an impact and we’re working with the administration. We can’t tell the federal government not to enforce the law. But we can direct and focus our activities on those people that are doing bad things,” said Newhouse.

H-2A requests surge in state

Over the past decade, states in the Pacific Northwest have been requesting more H-2A workers for harvesting tree fruit. In Washington alone, employers reported needing more than 37,000 workers in 2025 – a figure that includes all labor, not just H-2A positions. By June 2025, the Department of Homeland Security had approved just over 28,000 H-2A workers for the state.

Nationally, employers requested more than 333,000 H-2A positions, with only 317,408 approved, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

More H-2A workers are expected to come to Washington through the end of September, according to Gastelum. The number of certified H-2A workers who are given a visa to work for a designated farm for a period of time more than doubled between 2017 and 2022 in the U.S.

“Last year, we had approximately 36,000 H-2A worker positions certified by the United States Department of Labor to come to Washington and do farm work,” said Bertha Clayton, the director of Washington’s Office of Agricultural and Seasonal Workforce.

That office is part of the Employment Security Department. According to the state's ESD, there's been a more than 240% increase in H-2A workers in Washington since 2013.

Washington is one of the top states requesting H-2A workers following Florida, Georgia and California. In neighboring states, Oregon has approved more than 20,000 H-2A workers and Idaho has approved more than 5,200 workers for 2025, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The guest worker program positions are filed by the employers from large farm labor contractors or grower associations, headquartered in one location. But the workers they recruit may be dispatched to farms across multiple counties or states. Federal records list the petitioner’s business address rather than each individual worksite, so the geographic footprint of petitions does not always reflect where the labor is deployed. For example, WAFLA based in Lacey, Wash., has more than 4,500 H-2A workers approved but sends those workers to farms around the state.

Gastelum said the current immigration situation hasn't caused an exponential increase in H-2A visa applications, but they’ve seen higher scrutiny – even on workers who have been coming to the U.S. for years.

Gastelum said the U.S. Consulate is paying more attention to petitioners’ travel history, if they have overstayed before, or have family in the U.S. Those might be reasons for a more in-depth review.

Still, farmers have filed for more emergency H-2A workers this year. Those are fast track requests for temporary agricultural workers under exceptional circumstances, including an unusual labor shortage.

“We might have doubled this year in Washington. There might be like 10 or 15 emergency petitions that got filed this year versus single digits in prior years,” Gastelum said.

Researchers assess impact of ICE raids on farm labor

Researchers say that it may be too early to see the direct long term effects of changes in immigration enforcement on agriculture. Jeff Luckstead, a professor at Washington State University’s School of Economic Sciences, said ICE raids could trigger another exodus of undocumented workers, similar to the 2008 Great Recession, putting farmers in a bind.

When immigrants went back home after the recession, farmers faced a labor shortage that reduced the workforce and made it harder to fill field jobs.

Clayton, the director of the state Agricultural and Seasonal Workforce Services Office, said besides immigration, other factors like age and that generations do not pass down farmwork jobs, are also impacting the labor force.

According to data from USDA, fewer young immigrants are working in agriculture, raising the average age of foreign-born farmworkers and driving up the overall age of the farm workforce.

“There’s just a smaller base so then they’re gonna have to rely on H-2A more and more. It could be the tipping point where farmers just rely more heavily on the H-2A program,” said Luckstead.

Luckstead said that undocumented workers are also looking to other jobs for higher wages, and easier working conditions, which adds to the smaller pool of workers.

Legislative updates to revitalize the industry

Newhouse and U.S. Representative Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-PA), the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, recently held meetings in Prosser and Yakima. They heard concerns on agricultural issues, including a shortage of workers, the costs of the H-2A program, and the need to revitalize the industry.

Hops for brewing beer are among the crops grown in Central Washington. Brian Crawford, president and CEO of the Beer Institute, said growers understand the current Trump administration's goal to secure the border, but also the need for comprehensive immigration reform.

“It is a hot-button issue, and it's made even hotter by some of the national news that we're seeing,” Crawford said. “I do think there is a need for the beer industry, the hop industry, the farmers, to step up and say: ‘enough is enough’. Let's figure this out and come (to) work, Democrats and Republicans alike, and get something done.”

Newhouse and Thompson said strengthening the agriculture sector is an issue of national security.

“We've really made a great point with the administration, that we can't create food insecurity, to make sure that we have certainty and continuity in terms of workforce,” Thompson said. “Without the workers, again, that's food insecurity, which is national insecurity.”

Newhouse, a farmer near Sunnyside and the former director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture, has reintroduced a bipartisan piece of legislation from 2019: The Farm Workforce Modernization Act. The legislation would update the H-2A visa program, create more legal pathways for farmworkers, and establish a nationwide electronic verification system for agricultural labor.

The proposal would also revamp the guest worker application by altering wage calculations for the H-2A program and allow employers to submit a single application for multiple seasons. Newhouse also proposed a pilot program that would grant up to 10,000 workers special status, enabling them to work for any H-2A registered employer without needing an individual petition.

In June, the Trump administration set up a new office in the U.S. Labor Department to simplify access to employment-based visas including H-2A programs. According to the USDA, the office will streamline the application form, regulations and digital application process for farmers.

This action came shortly after Trump said on social media in June that the aggressive policy on immigration was “taking very good workers” from farms and hotels, whose jobs were “almost impossible to replace.” Trump called to protect farmers, signaling changes were coming. Soon after the post, ICE announced it would pause raids at those locations. However, according to a report by The Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security reversed Trump’s reprieve on raids.

Farmers say they need a better solution

For growers like Buchholz in Wapato, the H-2A program is too expensive.

“There's a downside, right, to how we're handling it. Maybe H-2A, maybe you just have to spend that money and go that route, but I think that would probably bankrupt the farm at this point,” Buchholz said.

Currently, the wage for H-2A workers exceeds the state's minimum wage.

The Adverse Effect Wage Rate that sets minimum pay for H-2A farmworkers has jumped 36% since 2018, reaching $19.82 an hour in 2024 passing the state’s $16.66 minimum wage. On top of wages, growers must accommodate for housing, transportation and visa fees.

“A farmer can spend anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000, $7,000, depending on if they're filing themself or if they're using an agent like WAFLA or even an attorney, right, depending on what those service fees are,” said Gastelum. “That's just to get the application drafted, make sure it's legally compliant, that it has all the things it needs, and then to get it approved.”

The USDA estimates that other miscellaneous costs related to housing and basic services for migrant workers range from $9,000 to $13,000 per worker.

Finding enough hands in fields to complete harvest has become even harder for some farmers. To complete the harvest, about half of Smith's workforce consists of H-2A workers.

“We haven’t had anybody knock on our door looking for work. I’ve heard from fieldmen and growers that things are tight this year for labor,” said Smith.

He said that uncertainty around the border and immigration enforcement has put both workers and farmers on edge. He believes farmers need an affordable, accessible program to retain skilled labor.

“ The farmers are nervous, just like the workers are nervous. We all need each other and we need some kind of good solution,” said Smith.

This first piece in the project "Harvest at a crossroads: How immigration changes are affecting Northwest farming and communities." It is a collaboration between Northwest Public Broadcasting, El Sol de Yakima and the Yakima Herald-Republic. This project is funded by the Poynter Institute.