Wisconsin dairy farmers may have a new avenue to hire workers under new seasonal labor visa rules the Trump administration announced Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security will give dairy farmers broader access to the federal H-2A program, through which farmers can secure temporary visas for seasonal agricultural workers.

Background

The dairy industry has lobbied for years to ease program rules barring visas for ostensibly year-round farm roles like milking; those rules also exclude many livestock and mushroom farms from the program.

Some dairy farms already hire H-2A workers for non-milking jobs; at least 14% of Wisconsin farms approved for visas this year have dairy herds, U.S. Department of Labor and Wisconsin milk producer license data shows.

Calumet County dairy farmer Amy Woldt hired three H-2A workers from South Africa this year as heavy equipment operators. "We don’t really need them for working with the cattle," she told Wisconsin Watch, but they do need a crew to run the farm’s skid steers and other farm machinery.

Impact on Dairy Farms

For Calumet County farmer Kurt Schneider, the H-2A program could offer a more stable workforce than the current cutthroat competition between farms allows. The pool of often-illegal immigrant dairy workers is shrinking, in part because some workers are opting to return to their home countries amid the immigration enforcement push, and remaining workers can now hop between farms to earn higher wages.

Schneider added that he would be thrilled to hire for his milking operations through the H-2A program. His current 35-person milking crew is mostly Spanish-speaking, so Schneider would favor H-2A workers from Mexico to supplement his dairy workforce.

Original reporting: Wisconsin Watch — read the source article.