American farming and unauthorized workers

I’ve posted often on the farm workforce in the United States.  The role of unauthorized persons in farming, particular in California’s produce farms and in dairy farms in other parts of the country, was huge decades ago, but appears to have declined relative to persons legally able to work (go here).  H-2A temporary work visas designed mainly for farm workers have soared in usage, from 75,000 in 2010 to close to 400,000 today (go here). Project 2025 calls for the elimination of these visas. Here is 2022 indepth demographic profile of unauthorized farm workers.

Here is a summary of a fresh report by the Farm and Food File:

Nearly 45% of U.S. agricultural workers, or 950,000 out of 2.2 million, are unauthorized migrants. Donald Trump’s proposed mass deportation plan would severely impact states like Wisconsin, where 70% of dairy farm labor is performed by over 10,000 undocumented workers. The state’s dairy industry would collapse without these workers. The National Milk Producers Federation states that immigrant labor accounts for 51% of all dairy labor, producing 79% of the U.S. milk supply. California would also be heavily affected, as approximately 75% of its farmworkers are undocumented.

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