A handful of House Republicans with deep financial ties to the agriculture lobby are joining Democrats to reintroduce an amnesty for more than two million illegal aliens working on United States farms.
Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), Mike Simpson (R-ID), David Valadao (R-CA), and John Duarte (R-CA) have joined Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Jim Costa (D-CA), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Salud Carbajal (D-CA), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) to reintroduce the Farm Workforce Modernization Act — a bill passed in 2019 and 2021 that ultimately failed to gain traction in the Senate despite being backed by many Republicans and Democrats.
Aside from providing amnesty to about 2.1 million illegal aliens working on U.S. farms — allowing them to apply for green cards and eventually secure naturalized American citizenship — the bill keeps agriculture wages down to “[protect] against sudden wage increases that disrupt employer planning and operations.”
Specifically, the bill freezes wages for one year and caps wage fluctuations nationwide at 3.25 percent for almost a decade.
The bill also dramatically grows the nation’s limitless H-2A visa program in which foreign workers are imported to take U.S. farm jobs for up to three years. Under provisions of the bill, dairy farmers and other agriculture-related sectors would be able to import up to 20,000 foreign H-2A visa workers.
In addition, the bill adds 40,000 employment-based green cards for which foreign H-2A visa workers can apply after a decade in the program — creating a new pipeline of legal immigration.
The farmworker amnesty has been a fixture of the powerful agricultural lobby’s agenda for years. Campaign finance data shows that sponsors of the bill have deep financial ties to the agriculture lobby.
Lofgren, for instance, raked in $10,000 from the Western Growers Association’s political action committee (PAC) in 2022, while Newhouse took $9,500 from the Dairy Farmers of America’s PAC. Similarly, Simpson took $10,000 from California Dairies Inc.’s PAC last year. Valadao accepted $10,000 from Land O’Lakes’s PAC, and Duarte took tens of thousands from multiple farms in his election bid.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
