US Agriculture Secretary: No Amnesty for Deported Farmworkers; Medicaid Recipients Can Replace Them

Trump’s push for more deportations could boost demand for foreign farmworkers with ‘guest worker’ visas

Mexican farmworkers with H-2A visas weed a North Carolina tobacco field in 2016. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty ImagesThe U.S. has an important choice to make regarding agriculture. It can import more people to pick crops and do other kinds of agricultural labor, it can raise wages enough to lure more U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status to take these jobs, or it can import more food. All three options contradict key Trump admini…

Ag Policy Blog: Rollins Says No Amnesty for Farmworkers, But Medicaid Recipients Could Fill the Void

At a news conference on Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said there will be no legal amnesty for undocumented farmworkers. Instead, Rollins suggested unemployed people on Medicaid could fill those jobs that can't be done by automation.

Bishop Goes to Bat for Migrant Farm Workers As Administration Mulls Enforcement, Visa Changes

F Armstrong Migrants work on a farm. According to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 47% of U.S. agricultural workers are unauthorized immigrants.

Iowa leaders weigh in on intersection of deportation policy and need for farm labor

Iowa’s elected leaders present and past are discussing a back-and-forth within President Donald Trump’s administration about how to manage farm labor amid a hardline deportation policy.

Medicaid enrollees targeted for forced farm work under Trump immigration crackdown

A top Trump administration official is proposing what critics call a thinly veiled form of forced labor, suggesting that millions of low-income Americans on Medicaid should be used to replace undocumented immigrants the government is deporting en masse from U.S.…

The president was golfing while Texas flood victims were fighting to survive

The most bizarre of all is the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, who says immigrant farm workers should be deported and replaced with people on Medicaid. Many in the Trump administration claim to be Christians, yet do not seem to care about the lives of people who are only trying to survive, writes Desmal Baker of Painesville in a letter to the editor.