On the southern portion of California’s Central Coast, President Trump’s crusade against immigrants has left a deep mark. These days it seems like almost everyone there has seen or felt the aftermath of immigration raids: cars with broken windows sitting idle and businesses emptied of their usual employees and patrons. The human toll is very serious. At least the raids were removed around Christmas. 100 people from our communities, leaving children without parents and families without primary breadwinners – creating crises that extend far beyond the moment of enforcement.
The economic consequences of immigration and customs enforcement raids are equally severe. recent farmer survey Immigration raids and the fear they generate have been shown to have led to a shortage of farm workers, especially in labor-intensive crops like strawberries – the region’s most valuable agricultural commodity – where the fruits rot on the plant without immigrant workers picking them.
Preliminary research measuring the economic impact of ICE raids In Oxnard it is estimated that there will be $3 billion to $7 billion in direct crop losses, with significant impacts on other sectors of the economy. As raids reduce families’ income – whether through the direct loss of a working family member or in the form of loss in business production or sales – they spend less in the local economy. The ripple effect means that the total economic impact of ICE raids is much greater than that of undamaged crops, with losses concentrated most among the most vulnerable: farmworkers.
Recent changes to the foreign worker program threaten to deepen the wound. The federal program, known as H-2A, allows growers and farm labor contractors to recruit temporary foreign workers to meet seasonal labor demand. It has become the fastest growing work visa system in US agriculture. it brings with it a Well–Documented history of wage theft, abuse and trafficking In part, H-2A was enabled by workers’ relative isolation and inability to find other employment while in the United States.
By October 2025, wages paid to H-2A workers were low, but not so low that the labor market would be distorted and wages paid to domestic farm workers would be lower. In October, the Trump administration drastically cut wages for H-2A workers and, in doing so, cut wages for agricultural workers across the US, regardless of visa status. Trump’s changes include direct wage cuts as well as new provisions that allow employers to charge accommodations fees of up to $3 per hour worked.
Estimates of the wage gains for farm workers due to these changes range from $4.4 billion to $5.4 billion, Or 10% Up to 12% of farmworkers’ annual wages. Given these figures, in Santa Barbara County alone – where I conduct research – the loss to farm workers could amount to $126 million to $152 million annually, given the reduction in spending and tax revenues spread across the region.
With H-2A labor now cheaper than domestic farm workers, visa holders are likely to fill at least one-fifth of all farm jobs in Santa Barbara County. That’s up from the program’s 2023 peak in the county, when 18.1% of all agriculture jobs were filled by H-2As, before wage increases caused many producers to drop out of the program in 2024 and 2025. Including the housing deduction, employers can now pay H-2A workers $13.90 an hour, which is significantly less than California’s minimum wage of $16.90 an hour. Producers have a strong incentive to hire resident workers in place of low-cost H-2A labor, resulting in local agricultural workers losing their jobs and income. Additionally, due to decreased income and employment, more farmworker households will be forced to rely on benefit programs such as CalFresh, which will increase government spending.
The tax and budget consequences of expanded H-2A use should be a serious concern for local and state governments. Trump’s changes not only significantly reduce farm workers’ taxable income, but H-2A workers themselves generate less local tax revenue and economic activity than resident workers.
H-2A employers and employees are exempt from major payroll taxes, including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance. At the same time, the temporary structure of the program – about six months on average – means that workers send a large portion of their earnings abroad to support families they cannot bring with them, thereby limiting the local spending and sales tax base.
Elected officials are not powerless in the face of these changes. A range of policy levers can help stabilize the labor market under increasing stress, particularly those that underpin a meaningful wage level and limit further downward pressure on earnings. This could include increasing the farm minimum wage, increasing the program oversight capacity of the California Employment Development Department, and strengthening legal protections for undocumented farmworkers organizing for better working conditions.
The United Farm Workers are currently challenging the Trump administration’s wage rate and housing cuts in court, arguing that they are in the right One of the largest wealth transfers from workers to employers in the history of American agriculture. Meanwhile, Assemblymember Maggie Creel (D-Sacramento) has introduced legislation to raise the minimum hourly wage for some farm workers to $19.75 – effectively restoring the previous H-2A rate. But this reform, while necessary, will not take effect until 2027 and still needs to be passed. In the interim, state and local governments should act decisively to enforce existing wage limits, ensuring that employers cannot use the expanded housing deduction to push workers’ wages below the legal minimum.
These are not revolutionary steps; Those are basic protections. The alternative is to accept a race to the bottom – on wages, on working conditions and on the economic stability of the region.
Matt Kinsella-Walsh is a graduate researcher with UC Santa Barbara Community Labor Center and Organizing Knowledge Project. He researches agricultural economics and labor in the North American strawberry industry.
