"Not Amnesty Lite": Trump's new plan for migrant worker visas

Under pressure from worried farmers and hotel owners, the Trump administration is launching a program to streamline issuing visas for temporary, migrant workers to try to make sure fruits get picked, meat is packed and lodgings are cleaned.Why it matters: President Trump's immigration crackdown has put his administration between a MAGA rock and a special-interest hard place.Farmers who rely on noncitizen workers — who make up as much as 40% of the agricultural labor market — are howling that Trump's mass deportation program is damaging the labor market, and could therefore threaten the food supply.But Trump's MAGA base wants to ratchet up deportations, saying the administration shouldn't allow employers to incentivize illegal immigration by granting "amnesty" to certain noncitizen workers.Zoom in: Trying to balance those competing interests, the Department of Labor has created the Office of Immigration Policy. It's designed to be a red-tape-cutting, one-stop shop to help employers get faster approval for temporary worker visas for noncitizen labor."Today, @USDOL took action to ensure taxpayer-funded workforce services are reserved for American workers — not illegal immigrants," Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer wrote Thursday on X, announcing new labor guidelines.The Office of Immigration Policy is so new that it has no stats on how many employers it plans to work with, but officials say it will have "customer-centered policies" with employers, help coordinate with other federal agencies and try to speed visa approvals.The new office won't help those who are in the country illegally to stay or get work visas — that's barred by current immigration law, officials said. New visa recipients would have to have their paperwork completed in their home country before legally migrating to the U.S."This is not amnesty. It's not amnesty lite," a senior administration official told Axios. "No one who is illegally here is being given a pathway to citizenship or residency."Zoom out: Trump has pushed the strongest, toughest and meanest immigration policies of any modern president. But his recent suggestions of leniency to farmers and key industries that have hired unauthorized workers have left MAGA hardliners suspicious."Any time someone says, 'This isn't an amnesty because ...' then it's an amnesty. If an illegal alien gets to stay, that's an amnesty," said Mark Krikorian, a vocal immigration restrictionist.Krikorian said Trump should start raising the minimum wage for H-2A visas so that farmers start investing in mechanization to wean themselves from "illegal labor."Because the agricultural industry has had so much unauthorized labor, it will take years to have a fully authorized workforce, even with the new Office of Immigration Policy's program. An estimated 70% of the workers are already gone from some farms.Reality check: Generally, unauthorized farmworkers have had a de facto type of amnesty from immigration officials, who are hesitant to conduct raids on a labor force that supplies food across the nation. There have been some farm raids under Trump (including a high-profile operation Thursday in California), but he mostly backed off widespread farm raids after June 12, when he took to Truth Social and lamented the loss of farm, leisure and hotel-sector labor."That was the bat signal to ICE: Leave the farmers alone," one Trump adviser said.The intrigue: Trump's post that day was made after lobbying by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.But it caught three crucial administration players flatfooted: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's aggressive immigration policies."Every [Cabinet] secretary can't do that: Go rogue and call the president like this, without any sort of appreciation for competing conversations or ideology," another senior official said.Inside the room: In White House meetings, Miller took the lead in dialing back the president from moving toward anything that could be branded an "amnesty" program.One idea that was shot down: a "touchback" program under which laborers illegally in the U.S. would have go back to their nation of origin, get a U.S. work visa there and be able to return here. For some workers, that would require an exception to current law, which bars re-entry into the U.S. for those who immigrate here illegally and stay for six months or more."Stephen is so hardcore that the president almost jokes about it, saying that, 'You could have a person who has been here for 20 years and has a clean record and everyone loves them, and Stephen will say deport them,' " according to one person who heard Trump's remarks.What they're saying: "President Trump is a tireless advocate for American farmers — they keep our families fed and our country prosperous," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Axios. "He trusts farmers and is committed to ensuring they have the workforce needed to remain successful."

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