Retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon says “hate” and ‘stupidity” are motivating the citizens who oppose his support of a cheap labor bill for the rural economy– even as multiple other GOP representatives are quietly quitting the amnesty push.
“What polling shows us is that approx 35% HATE all immigrants … And they’re loud,” Bacon said in a July 22 tweet.
“It’s time we stand up to stupidity,” Bacon responded when the pro-investor bill was criticized by a former top official in President Donald Trump’s first administration.
Pennsylvania Rep. Glen Thompson’s Securing America’s Workforce Act (SAWA) would massively expand the number of wage-capped H-2A visa workers in the rural economy. The bill would also allow many U.S-based illegals to gain legal status by working for food companies.
“This is about replacing entire segments of American [agriculture workforce] with foreign serf labor,” Rosemary Jenks, founder of the Immigration Accountability Project, told Breitbart News. The resulting loss of rural jobs and spending power — and the resulting out-migration of young Americans — will wreck many local businesses, including those owned by the members of many Chamber of Commerce groups, said Jenks.
So far, four of 47 GOP members have announced they are ending their support of the bill: Nebraska Rep. Mike Flood, plus North Carolina’s Rep. Tim Moore, R-N.C., Georgia’s Brian Jack, and Indiana’s Mark Messmer.
“Concerns from constituents, conservative leaders and Nebraska ag producers have made clear that provisions in the Securing America’s Workforce Act are not the right way to uphold our immigration laws,” Flood told Nebraska Public Media News. “I’m listening, and at a moment when our border is finally secure thanks to President Trump’s leadership, I’m not willing to move forward on anything that could risk our progress,,” he added.
More GOP representatives will drop the bill, William Gheen, the president of ALIPAC, a grassroots pro-American group whose members are prodding their legislators, told Breitbart News:
We believe that many of the Republican lawmakers currently co-sponsoring HR 9535 do not know about the Amnesty provisions in the bill and have not thought out the long-term impacts of changing America’s existing immigration laws to accommodate illegal migrants and their employers …This Amnesty bill would undermine America’s existing laws, border security, and mass deportation efforts by caving to big agriculture and meat packing lobby interests and selling American workers and taxpayers out once again for the illegal labor lobby.
Bacon is retiring this year, but in prior elections, he was strongly supported by the agriculture industry. His district is the Democratic-leaning city of Omaha, and includes many migrant-using businesses, such as meatpackers.
Many meatpackers used President Joe Biden’s supply of legalized refugees, quasi-legal parolees, and illegal migrants to hold down wage costs and to avoid investments in labor-saving technology.
But Trump’s low-migration policy is forcing them to raise wages and divert profit into technology. For example, in June 2025, KNLVradio.com reported that a huge JBS meatpacking firm in Iowa had signed a deal that gives pay raises, paid sick leave, and a pension plan to 26,000 meatpacking workers. The article was headlined “Groundbreaking Union Contract Brings Major Gains for JBS Workers Across the U.S.”
“I’ve been working at JBS for 10 years, and when I got the news about the pension, I was excited,” said Thelma Cruz, who works at the JBS Pork plant in Marshalltown, Iowa. “My husband also works here, and when we retire, we will both get pension checks every month.”
Higher wages for meatpackers also help Americans in other companies find higher wages for their families.
The bill defended by Bacon would allow meatpackers to hire H-2A workers instead of hiring Americans or investing in labor-saving, wage-raising technology that can help many farmers.
But Bacon has long supported mass migration into Nebraska’s job, retail, and housing markets — including by Afghan and Indian migrants. — because it helps the local businesses that supported his campaigns. For example, he is now calling for Haitian migrants to be allowed to stay in the United States for jobs.
On April 15, for example, he posted:
Removing TPS status for Haitians living in the United States would cost 350,000 workers their ability to work at a time when we’re already facing serious workforce shortages. I’ve heard from healthcare providers and business leaders across Nebraska, including @OmahaChamber, who are concerned about the impact this would have on patient care and our economy. I don’t see the goodness of deporting people who are here legally, working, and contributing to our country.
Bacon also argues that this H-2A amnesty is popular and supported by Christianity. “Most Americans want a more reasonable and decent policy [and] A Christian policy is more balanced,” he said in a July 22 tweet.
However, polls show that Americans deeply oppose the corporate use of migrants to undercut wages and inflate housing costs.
In contrast to Bacon, Trump and his top deputies are zig-zagging towards a policy of favoring high-wage automation over low-wage migration. “We have to get efficient … we’ll probably add to [the existing workforce] through robotically—it’s going to be robotically,” Trump said. “Then, somebody is going to have to make the robots [so] the whole thing, it feeds on itself,” he added.
Brinker Harding, a real estate agent and investor, is the GOP candidate to replace Bacon. His platform says little about immigration, except “Deport criminal illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes.”
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