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Introduced May 7, 2025 by Zoe Lofgren · Last progress May 7, 2025
Creates a new temporary certified agricultural worker (CAW) program with a pathway for eligible long‑term agricultural workers to adjust to lawful permanent resident status, expands and reforms the H‑2A temporary agricultural worker system (including a limited nonseasonal H‑2A category and a portable H‑2A pilot), and builds a new federal electronic employment‑eligibility verification system. The bill also strengthens worker protections and enforcement (recruiter registration, employer penalties, bond requirements), funds rural and farmworker housing preservation and new housing programs, and requires extensive rulemaking, reporting, and interagency coordination to implement the changes. The measure affects migrants and immigrant agricultural workers, employers who hire farm labor (including recruiters and labor contractors), federal agencies (DHS, DOL, USDA, SSA, DOS), nonprofits assisting workers, and rural housing programs; it establishes fees, penalties, grant programs, appropriations, and multiple phased implementation deadlines tied to agency rules.
The bill expands legal status and labor protections for farmworkers and modernizes H‑2A systems and housing supports—benefiting many workers and improving enforcement—but does so with substantial new compliance costs, privacy and criminal‑enforcement risks, implementation challenges, and increased federal spending that could raise costs for employers, consumers, and taxpayers.
Long‑term agricultural workers (and their dependents) gain temporary certified agricultural worker (CAW) status with work authorization and a clear multi‑year pathway to lawful permanent residence, reducing immigration precarity and stabilizing farm labor supply.
Agricultural and H‑2A workers receive stronger workplace protections (MSPA parity, dairy safety training, posted rights, heat‑illness plans, inspected housing, itemized pay statements, surety bonds and stronger enforcement tools) that reduce abuse, injury, and wage theft.
The bill expands and creates legal pathways and program changes (reserved immigrant numbers for agricultural/H‑2A‑experienced workers, higher immigrant caps, pilot portable H‑2A program) to increase opportunities for permanent residence and to improve worker mobility for farms.
CAW participants and their dependents remain ineligible for federal means‑tested benefits and ACA premium tax credits while in status, leaving many newly authorized workers without access to public health coverage or safety‑net supports.
The bill creates substantial new compliance, administrative, and financial burdens for employers, recruiters, and small farms (recordkeeping, translations, bonds, registration, reporting, new fees and penalties, IT implementation), likely raising operating costs and in some cases reducing willingness to hire foreign workers or raising food prices.
A centralized verification/job registry system with biometric/photo‑matching and expanded data sharing raises privacy, surveillance, and cybersecurity risks and could produce erroneous tentative nonconfirmations that disrupt employment and income for immigrant workers.