Foreign seasonal workers that come to work at Pacific Northwest farms will soon earn less in hourly wages.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor under Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, formerly a representative for Oregon’s 5th congressional district, changed what workers under the federal H-2A agricultural program earn in hourly wages.

In Oregon, agricultural workers with these visas will go from $19.82 an hour to as low as $15.25, a 23% reduction — other more skilled positions will pay slightly more, $17.62.

That H-2A program allows agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to hire temporary foreign farmworkers, many of whom come from Mexico.

As of this month, the federal government has certified over 3,700 people to come work in Oregon under the H-2A program in 2025, according to data from the DOL Office of Foreign Labor Certification. The program is not as widely used in Oregon as in Washington and California.

The federal government changed what’s called the “adverse effect wage rate,” or AEWR — a rate based on regional wage data.

It’s called that because it’s meant to prevent farmers from undercutting local workers if they bring cheaper foreign workers to do the same job, said Enrique Gastelum, CEO of the Worker and Farmer Labor Association, a Washington-based group that provides visa application and other services to farms mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

“The Department of Labor has been given a duty by Congress to figure out what is the right wage to set things at, so that foreign workers are not coming in at a level below what U.S. farm workers are making,” he said.

”An adverse effect would mean it’s negatively, or too low of a wage would negatively impact U.S. workers when you’re bringing in H-2A workers.”

Woodburn area farmworkers targeted by ICE, advocates say

Over the last decade, more farmers have been using the program, but at the same time, wages have jumped significantly — sometimes upwards of 10% year-over-year because of the way pay has been calculated, Gastelum said

Those wages were calculated using payroll data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Labor Survey, though that agency discontinued the survey in August.

Gastelum said it didn’t include data from local agricultural labor contractors, so skewed true local wages.

“And so it started accumulating to the point where the cost for labor-intensive farms that have been using the H-2A program was getting out of control,” he said.

After early reprieve from immigration enforcement, farming industry reckons with raids

Agricultural industry groups say this is long overdue change, at a time when, they say, prices for fertilizer, seeds, equipment and other costs are on the rise and income is down.

“Labor costs can be nearly half the cost of production, making it hard for family farmers to break even and more expensive to grow food domestically,” read an Oregon Farm Bureau press release. “Oregon is a specialty crop state and will benefit greatly from this change.

‘Farm workers should be paid more, not less’

But farmworker advocacy groups don’t see it that way.

California-based United Farm Workers largely condemned the decision for not giving the public an opportunity to provide comment before its effective date, calling the change a “money grab for corporate agribusiness.”

“The Trump wage cut is a catastrophe for American workers in agriculture who growers intend to replace with cheap and exploitable foreign guest workers,” Teresa Romero, the president of the UFW said in a statement. “When guest worker wages are lowered, it is American jobs that are lost.”

The farmworker union calculated the policy change will cut farmworkers’ income by at least one third, with cuts ranging from $5 to $7 per hour depending on the state. All told, workers on these agricultural visas could lose $2.46 billion annually in wages.

Oregon farm group says rising immigration enforcement is disruptive to agriculture

But Gastelum said he doesn’t see growers flocking to apply to the program overnight. That’s because the employer or labor contractor that sponsors a worker’s H-2A visa is required to provide their housing, food and transportation, which can run up to $1,400 to $1,600 per person each season, Gastelum said.

He does think workers who have been participating in the program might reconsider now that wages are lower.

“I think that’s a legit thing where we might see some workers get disinterested in wanting to come,” he said.

The new policy will also deduct $2.11 from hourly wages for housing. In Oregon, that would put some workers under the state’s minimum wage, in which case, they would make it the highest applicable wage under state law.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/10/northwest-seasonal-farmworkers-earn-less/