Minnesota farmers caught between shifting guest-worker policies

Chiara and Travis Bolton needed to grow their Minnesota bee farm. They just couldn’t find U.S. workers.

Instead, they sought and won a $200,000 federal grant last year that helped them build worker housing and hire two Guatemalans to tend colonies.

But the federal check never arrived.

The Boltons say they’re trapped between the Trump and Biden administrations’ conflicting priorities for America’s temporary foreign workers.

President Joe Biden funded programs to bring workers from abroad. President Donald Trump froze government spending and has cracked down on immigration, unnerving even legal guest workers.

The zigzag from Washington, D.C., has left many employers who rely on guest workers in a state of confusion and frustration.

The Boltons are also $50,000 in the hole.

“We’ve done all the work,” said Chiara Bolton. “And it’s been radio silence.”

The Boltons are just one example of the uncertainty gripping much of Minnesota’s $40 billion farm economy, where major agribusiness companies, landscapers and family-owned vegetable farms rely on thousands of foreign workers to harvest crops and complete chores.

Yet they continue to secure so-called H-2A visas to bring in legal guest workers. So far in 2025, farms and landscaping businesses have added 2,700 guest workers — an increase over last year at this time, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.

The rate of increase, however, is slower than in previous years.

As policymakers and agricultural producers gather in a cornfield near Redwood Falls, Minn., this week for the state’s annual Farmfest, labor across rural parts of the state is once again in the spotlight.

“They keep readjusting these programs,” said David Wilson, a Minneapolis-based lawyer who works with employers on H-2A visas. “That only adds to frustration on the part of the employer.”

Washington has sent mixed signals on the direction of the nation’s guest worker programs. The administration has said it may end all such foreign worker programs. Meanwhile, Congress is looking to end H-2A’s “temporary” requirement, effectively expanding the visa year-round.

Many H-2A employers declined to speak with the Minnesota Star Tribune. But farm associations, which often represent the industry, expressed uncertainty over what potential changes to the guest worker program might mean for them.

They also say legal immigration is one of the only answers to fill jobs and keep the economy growing.

It’s a message that has been getting through to the White House.

While his administration has carried out roving deportations, in a speech last month in Des Moines, Iowa, Trump said he didn’t want to “take all of the workers off the farms.”

Still, skeptics say his U.S. Department of Agriculture also has frozen $50 million in grants awarded to stimulate new H-2A relationships between foreign employees and employers. That’s where the Minnesota beekeepers’ misfortunes arose.

“Farmers have been on a roller coaster, seeing how policy on international workers has been interpreted,” said Sam Ziegler, director of GreenSeam, a southern Minnesota agricultural initiative.

For the Boltons, the chance to use public dollars to help their business build a steady pathway to visa-holders in Central America was an easy choice. The job requires long hours and shifts between Minnesota and Texas, where they raise the bees, and out to California, where they deploy some of them.

As part of the $200,000 grant awarded by the Biden administration, the Boltons made commitments to higher-quality housing and extra sick and overtime pay for the migrant workers.

Earlier this spring, the Boltons hired two workers and are still complying with the terms of the deal, even if the government has rescinded the funds.

“We’re still legally bound to it,” Travis Bolton said. “That’s a contract.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funds the guest worker pilot program, did not respond to a request for information on the program’s status.

Each year, more than 300 employers in Minnesota use the H-2A program, according to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Michael Marsh, CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, said he’s still trying sort out what the Trump administration has planned for the H-2A program.

The recently passed federal budget imposes a $250 “visa integrity fee” to most nonimmigrant visa applications, and Marsh said there’s ambiguity on whether employers or H-2A visa holders are the ones expected to pay it.

Marsh, whose organization claims to represent the employers who hire 90% of H-2A workers, said he’s written to the administration asking for clarity.

Marsh noted the Project 2025 platform, which the Trump administration has followed on some policy decisions, explicitly calls to “freeze and cap the H-2A program” and begin a gradual “phase down.”

In June, the House Appropriations Committee approved a Homeland Security budget that stripped the “temporary” requirement from the H-2A program, which has traditionally prevented dairy farms from accessing the guest worker program.

Whereas work on a crop farm ramps up during planting and harvest, a livestock operation needs consistent labor to tend to animals year-round.

“Animals, just like people, eat everyday,” said Loren Dauer, public policy director for the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation. “And somebody’s got to be there to feed them or milk them.”

Farm groups will note, privately, that the Trump administration’s deportations are inadvertently draining their labor pool.

“We’re seeing a lot of ICE raids around the country. We’ve seen some on large dairies as well as processing sites,” Dauer said. “We support following the law, but we also support going through the legal process to get legal labor.”

While Republicans shape the future of worker programs in Washington, D.C., critics of the H-2A program — including migrant rights’ groups — are sounding the alarm, charging that the guest worker program has exploited employees and changes will only exacerbate threats to worker safety.

“We think that any expansion (of H-2A) to the interest of employers should be paired with expansion for protections for workers,” said Abigail Kerfoot, deputy legal director for Centro de los Derechos del Migrante Inc.

Daniel Costa, a lawyer at the Economic Policy Institute, said there’s concern that removing the “temporary” status on the visas could risk creating a massive class of workers who are “permanently temporary.”

These workers could be trapped year after year in a dependent visa status, unable to change jobs, and lacking the full rights of other workers, Costa said.

The two beekeepers were looking forward to cultivating a relationship with workers who wanted to work hard and send back “every penny” they have to their families in their home country.

Bernardo Avila Escobar and Erick Francisco Lopez Garcia arrived in late March. They’ve lived part-time in Texas, tending to hives, as well as in Minnesota. They have helped the business grow, the Boltons said.

“They’re leaving their families, and it’s difficult being away from home,” said Travis. “But we’re making it work.”

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