Immigrant labor --> robots or nada

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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This article points out the obvious fact that immigrant labor does hard work for low pay which American’s won’t do.

Some jobs are being filled by robots, such as cow milkers and laser weed-zappers. But the administration is finally recognizing the reality.

The secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins declared in June 2025 that the administration remained committed to a “100 percent American” farm labor force. But her bravado did not last long. By September, she was reassuring farmers that the administration was doing “everything we can right now” to increase the number of seasonal visas for farm workers.

In November the administration announced changes that are expected to allow more than half a million seasonal workers to enter the country each year — an increase of more than 25 percent. In a regulatory filing the Department of Agriculture said the expansion was necessary because “qualified and eligible U.S. workers will not make themselves available in sufficient numbers.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/opinion/immigration-farming-trump-robots-labor.html

Wendy

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The filing also includes rationale for an exception to the Administrative Procedure Act that will limit notice and comment rules for their Interim Final Rule. Here are some snippets:

“There is ample data showing immediate dangers to the American food supply. The methodology for calculating AEWRs in the vacated 2023 AEWR Final Rule and even under current 2010 final rule, both of which used a single average gross hourly wage for the vast majority of H-2A jobs without regard to the qualifications of the employer’s job offer or how much time a worker spends performing specific duties during a work contract period poses an imminent risk to the supply of agricultural labor by setting unreasonably high price floors on labor. This IFR addresses and solves this imminent threat by implementing an AEWR methodology that results in more precise market-based price floors that still serves its statutory function of protecting American workers, but also, ensures that American supermarkets and U.S. consumers will have access to safe, affordable and American-grown produce.”

“The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers. Unless the Department acts immediately to provide a source of stable and lawful labor, this threat will grow as the tools Congress provided in H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act, to enhance enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws are deployed.”

“Accordingly, because notice and comment rulemaking would be impracticable and against the public interest, the Department hereby promulgates this IFR pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B). For the same reasons, good cause exists for the IFR to take immediate effect, and therefore, the Department sets the Effective Date to October 2, 2025 pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(d)(3).[57]”

Don’t like reading? Here’s a summary:

Our short-sighted cruel crackdown on immigrants has created a food emergency in the US. Turns out, we need immigrants to plant, cultivate, and harvest our crops…but we don’t want to pay them, so we’re changing the rules. Due to the emergency we created, we don’t want to follow the law that requires providing notice, allowing comments, and delaying implementation of our Final Rule.

If I’m an immigrant, do I choose to stay home and face the violence of roving gangs of criminals? Or do I choose to go to the US to earn a reduced temporary worker wage and face the violence of roving gangs of federal agents acting with impunity?

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Raise your hand if you didn’t see this coming. Sigh. Frickin’ idiots.

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Tough situation. Sounds like the agriculture industry needs to put down the crack pipe of using the illegal status of people the exploit them.

It takes time for industries to adjust. But they will adjust. More automation. Less hands on crops, higher costs for labor intensive foods.

Here’s the question that we have to ask when we bring in ilegal aliens to do low wage work.

“Are you willing to exploit some one for a cheap hamburger?”

The number or illegal aliens that should be tolerated in this country is zero.

Cheers
Qazulight

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And some of the industry just shutting down, at least in the U.S.

If the labor can’t go to where the farms are and where the customers are, the farms will have to go to where the labor is - and then the food gets exported to where the customers are.

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The practical answer to that is to issue seasonal visas so that the immigrant labor needed on farms would be legal. George W. Bush made that suggestion 25 years ago (one of his few good suggestions) but Congress wouldn’t pass a bill to do it.

It would have worked then and it would work now.

The laborers aren’t being exploited if they are coming and working voluntarily. They aren’t slaves. The free market produces the best results. Interference only produces higher prices and/or lower availability.
Wendy

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They almost are. The undocumented migrants are underpaid, with sketchy working conditions. But they can’t complain without fear of being deported. They can’t call OSHA, the cops (in case of rape, for example), nor contact anyone about wage concerns. True, they can leave. So -technically- not slaves. But the only alternative is to return home, which they left for a reason.

And we, USAians, benefit in the form of plentiful cheap produce.

Just pointing this out. I actually am not in favor of this system. It’s just the current reality. I favor migrant visas (affordable…not hundreds of dollars that they can’t afford), so that they can safely report crimes, abuse, dangerous working conditions, etc, without fear of being deported. Even if it means my broccoli costs 50% more.

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Ilegal aliens are exploited. We have labor laws for workers. Those laws were written to stop the exploitation of workers. Just because it happened before our grand parents were born doesn’t mean it did not happen.

Ilegal aliens are not protected by labor laws because they must operate outside the law. This is why George Bush was ignored when he proposed work permits (These have their own problems as does the HB1 visa) It is much more difficult to exploit legal aliens or HB1 visa holders and it is even more difficult to exploit citizen workers protected by labor. (Not impossible, but more difficult)

The reason we have so many ilegal aliens is that the powers that be. (Dark state, oligarchy what ever) wants the ilegal aliens here. If there is a business, including agriculture that cannot operate without exploiting people, too bad so sad. Close it.

Cheers
Qazulight

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Illegal aliens are willing to be exploited as otherwise they would not have come.

The Captain

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Doesn’t matter. Once you exploit a sub class you can move the exploitation through out the work force. The entire idea of allowing illegal aliens is to undermine the power of labor, specifically to undermine the labor laws.

Just because someone is doing better here than El Salvador does not mean that allowing them here without the benefit of labor law protection is good for the country.

In reality. It is probably a moot point as demographics will slow the availability of illegal aliens.

Cheers
Qazulight

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If the are illegal immigrants they are NOT allowed here!

BTW, I said nothing about “good for the country.” That’s a different issue.

The Captain

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The problem is, they are allowed. If they weren’t allowed they wouldn’t be here.

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Respectfully, that doesn’t make sense. Murder is not allowed, but we have murderers.

Perhaps you meant that if an employer couldn’t hire them, then they wouldn’t be here. I agree with that. And that is the relatively simple answer to people crossing the border, or overstaying their visas (which is a huge problem): penalize the employers. Don’t go after the laborers. Fine the employers a significant sum (i.e. more than can be written off as the “cost of doing business”), and they will become very diligent at verifying the employment status of their workers. That, in turn, will remove incentive for people to bypass the proper immigration channels.

I can only speculate that the reason this hasn’t happened is that business (e.g. Big Ag) don’t want it, and discourage their congresspeople from imposing such requirements. As long as business isn’t being penalized, their workers are expendable. Just hire a new bunch after the old bunch gets picked up in a sweep.

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FWIW, there are almost two million fewer than there were a year ago.

DB2

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Allowed to the point that entire industries are failing because they are no longer here. We have no industry based on having murderers. We do have industry based on illegal aliens.

Even the current administration of the U.S. Government is using words like, violent criminals, not every single illegal alien. The reason is that everyone in power since I have been old enough to pay attention, (1973) has talked about controlling illegal aliens but made sure that we had plenty of them in the country.

Cheers
Qazulight

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Yeah, that’s the Kristi Noem number, who wouldn’t have any reason to exaggerate, would she?

Meanwhile, the “deported” number is somewhere in the low hundreds of thousands. In fact, after the first six months of the administration, she claimed that 13,000 had “self-deported”, meaning that in the second six months that number must have been somewhere around 1,500,000+. This seems, uh, not likely.

Indeed, according to the census bureau (who, contrary to widely held thought, keeps surveying continuously), immigration continues apace - although they don’t separate “legal” from “illegal”.

Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024's increase of 2.8 million people. The Census Bureau report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

Luckily for your argument, the Center for Immigration Studies more-or-less agrees with you:

Overall Foreign-Born Population Down 2.2 Million January to July

Illegal population estimated to have fallen 1.6 million this year

On the other hand, there is this:

[Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org)] is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that advocates for lower immigration rates, often criticized for producing ideologically driven, anti-immigrant research. While cited by some politicians and media, it is widely considered unreliable by researchers and watchdog groups like the [Southern Poverty Law Center] and [Cato Institute], which frequently accuse them of misrepresenting data.

It’s worth noting that all of these “surveys” are conducted by telephone, and if you know anything about telephone response rates they are subject to fluctuation - include how an illegal immigrant might or might not answer the question “Are you here illegally?” in light of the current political climate. Or, said shorter: highly unreliable data, no matter what your own personal position.

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I live in the central Mexican State of Guanajuato, for centuries the source of a large segment of immigrants al norte. The small ancient pueblo near me has long had a high percentage of its people working in the USA, and recently that percentage has increased, not decreased. One young guy I know came home to be with his granny in town this Xmas and the went right back to Wisconsin.

I have strong doubts about the administration’s stats.

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