By Clint Thompson
There is a lot to like about U.S. Representative GT Thompson’s (PA-15) Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026; legislation that would improve accessibility and labor costs with the H-2A program.
Chris Butts, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association (GFVGA), highlighted those positives, as his organization hosted this year’s Georgia Ag Labor Relations Forum on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“The most important factor of the bill to me is that it was a bipartisan effort. The House Ag Committee formed a working group to look at the issue. And they came forward with recommendations from the industry all over the country,” Butts said. “If you look at those recommendations and you look at the report, they align pretty well. And now if you look at the report and look at GT’s bill, they align very well. What do we like about the bill? We like the fact that it’s a bipartisan effort and maybe that will give us the juice to push this forward over the line and get reform done.”
H-2A Program
According to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), the H-2A temporary agricultural program allows employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring nonimmigrant foreign workers to the U.S. to perform labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature.
“I think most important is stabilizing the AEWR (adverse effect wage rate). We got lucky here with a small increase this time. There were other states that had a 20% increase,” Butts said. “But we’re back in the same boat. USDA and DOL cannot explain to us exactly how that survey is going to work and there’s no predictability in what the wages are going to be. We’ve got to codify the AEWR portion of that and get those wages stabilized.
“From there, how can we improve accessibility to the program? Having one portal to log into for all the different agencies would be huge. Staggered entry would be huge. There’s lots to like in the bill, lots of good things. Even the portion that allows undocumented workers that are here to become H2A workers, that’s not a path to amnesty. They have to go home every year. They have limited rights while they’re here. It’s not a path to amnesty. It’s a path to get the workers that we need here in the United States.”