Thoughts from the Tractor Seat: Labor in Limbo
By Ken Polehn
The Dalles, Ore., July 5, 2025 — A farmer friend of mine said something recently that stuck with me:
“I’ve got 20 H-2A workers stopped at the border for over a month. Every one of them was here last year under the same program. I’ve spent thousands trying to get them back — and now I don’t have enough help to harvest my crop.”
That’s the reality too many growers are facing this season — not just in California, but right here in Oregon and Washington.
From Hood River to Wenatchee, from The Dalles to the Yakima Valley, orchardists and row crop farmers are watching crops hang heavy and crews come up short. Farmworkers who’ve been with us for years — trusted, skilled, and dependable — are now stuck in red tape, administrative delays, or worse, turned back at the border despite being part of the same program as the year before.
The H‑2A guest worker system, pitched as a solution, is quickly becoming a burden. In some states, growers are paying over $23 an hour — before you factor in housing, meals, transportation, and all the compliance headaches that come with it. For many family farms in the Northwest, it’s financially unsustainable.
Even worse, those who’ve already been working here — many for years — find themselves caught in legal limbo. Border enforcement and immigration raids are happening during harvest season, disrupting not only farm operations but the lives of the very people who help feed this country.
It’s a hard thing to say — but in some ways, our own federal government has become a middleman in modern-day human trafficking. They’ve built a system so rigid, so expensive, and so slow that it pushes good people into the shadows and forces them to pay smugglers just to do jobs Americans rely on.
This isn’t just bad policy — it’s dangerous. Not just for farmers, but for the food security of every family in America.
People like Manuel Cunha of the Nisei Farmers League are trying to change that. He’s backing the bipartisan Dignity Act, which would allow long-term undocumented workers to register and work legally without having to leave the country first. It's not amnesty — it’s practical, it’s respectful, and it’s overdue.
Whether you're growing sweet cherries in The Dalles, apples in Naches, or pears in Hood River, the truth is the same: we depend on these workers. If we don’t fix the system, we all suffer — at harvest, at the dinner table, and at the grocery store checkout.
The hands that feed us — farmers and farm workers alike — are being tied up in red tape. It’s time we cut through it.
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