The October 2025 revisions to the H-2A visa program quietly alter how agricultural wages are set. The Department of Labor has abandoned the Farm Labor Survey, which was designed to reflect farm-specific wage conditions, and replaced it with the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, a dataset drawn primarily from non-agricultural employers. At the same time, the program now establishes multiple wage tiers linked to job classifications and skill levels, fragmenting what had previously been a single wage minimum. Farm employers are also permitted to deduct the cost of employer-provided housing from the wages of H-2A workers, an option explicitly denied when it comes to domestic workers, even where housing is similarly provided.

The consequences do not stop with H-2A workers themselves. Migrant labor, bound by visa restrictions and employer dependence, functions as a disciplinary lever against the broader agricultural workforce. Its presence exerts downward pressure on wages and weakens workers’ability to resist deteriorating conditions. Rather than investing in mechanization or transforming production, capital relies on the continued availability of cheaper, more constrained labor.

None of this should be understood as accidental, poorly designed, or the result of partisan confusion. These policies are coherent expressions of capital in deepening crisis which must put downward pressure on wages in order to maintain profitability. A defense of wages and conditions must emerge through renewed class struggle unions which reject divisions between native and migrant labor.