Fifty GOP representatives are pushing an amnesty bill that will replace many Americans and rip the economic guts from their rural districts, says Rosemary Jenks, founder of the Immigration Accountability Project.
“This is about replacing entire segments of American [agriculture] with foreign serf labor,” she told Breitbart News as she described the draft bill.
The bill “would take a lot of jobs from the districts,” said Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project. The rural districts “would look like a country that’s not America … like a country from where the massive waves of migrants came,” he said.
The bill is titled “Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026.” The author is Rep. Glen Thompson (R-PA), and he has 50 co-sponsors, including four Democrats. The bill has support from a broad range of agriculture industry groups.
The bill would amnesty the existing population of illegal migrants by letting them transfer into a year-round expansion of the uncapped, seasonal H-2A visa-worker program.
The bill would flood cheap H-2A migrants into many additional jobs — and so force young Americans out of the rural districts, said Jenks. “Americans living in those areas … are going to have to leave — they’re not going to have any choice,” said Jenks.
The H-2A program is now being used by many farms to fill a minority of seasonal agriculture jobs. Overall, roughly 70 percent of agricultural jobs are now filled by Americans and their myriad labor-saving machines.
The seasonal H-2A workers are a subordinate class of people, akin to the powerless serfs of Europe in the feudal era, said Jenks. They work without many of the economic, legal, or political status of citizens, just as serfs worked for feudal barons in Europe, she said.
H-2As perform a wide variety of seasonal low-tech jobs – pruning and picking, meat growing and meat processing, harvesting, maintenance, logging, trucking, and care for racehorses. They are paid at a low, government-set wage. They also bring most of their earnings back home as remittances to their families in Mexico, South Africa, and other countries.
Many other rural-district jobs — such as teaching or healthcare jobs at investor-owned hospitals and medical chains — are already being absorbed by legalized migrants who get hired via the H-1B, J-1, and EB-3 programs.
The H-2As are also used because farmers try to avoid investing in high-tech machinery — such as robotic cow-milkers, weeders, or fruit pickers. The machinery generates well-paid jobs for local families.
In contrast, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have talked up the need to replace migrants with machines. “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.
The loss of normal jobs and young Americans to the H-2A replacements will wreck many local businesses, including businesses owned by members of the districts’ local Chamber of Commerce groups, said Jenks. The major agriculture groups “are members of the [local] chamber, so the whole chamber goes along with this, even though it’s going to harm a significant portion of the other business owners in the group,” she said.
The Americans’ exit would also place a bigger tax burden on remaining Americans, said Howell. “It places the bill for the [migrants’] healthcare and education on the native citizens,” he said.
So far, the non-agriculture businesses have not been part of the H-2A replacement debate, Jenks said.
The threat of near-term depopulation is not a problem for the big donors from the agriculture industry who are promoting the bill, she said:
They can put a giant fence around their estate, or you know, move to a different country. Whatever it takes, whatever the problem is, they can jump. They don’t have to send their kids to public schools. They don’t have to go to the emergency room. They’re not going to feel any of the impacts of of destroying their local district.
Also, the continued flood of legalized migrant workers into coastal cities minimizes the marketplace pressure for coastal investors to hire young Americans in interior districts.
The bill’s rules would also help millions of illegal migrants to claim fast-track H-2A status via fraud, making enforcement more difficult for the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats will use the legalized H-2A status to demand a full amnesty and voting rights for the poor migrants, Jenks said. “It’s much less of a [political] jump to say, ‘Oh, well, I mean, these people have been working in agriculture for years and years, and we owe it to them to give them permanent residency,’” that leads to citizenship, she said.
The bill also provides a model for many other industry groups who want to expand the H-2B visa program — and to create a H-2C visa program — that provide work permits for millions of additional migrant workers. Those migrants would push American citizens out of many more jobs in hotels, restaurants, elder care, factories, construction, and resorts.
Thomson did not respond to questions from Breitbart News, despite the growing wave of anger at the bill.
“All of these [50] Republicans should lose their seat for supporting amnesty,” said a tweet from Ryan Metthew Neuhaus, a pro-American activist.
“This is what most of our farmers are requesting,” said a tweeted response from bill supporter GOP Rep. Don Bacon (R-NB). “Perhaps you’re on the wrong side of this issue or with the Dems. Support our farmers.”
Neuhaus responded: ‘It’s remarkable how quickly Pork Barrel Bacon’s “America First” becomes “Special Interests First” the moment the illegal labor lobby comes calling.”
Many of the bill’s supporters come from districts where voters overwhelmingly support President Donald Trump and his pro-American policies.
As usual, establishment publications are quietly endorsing the push for more visa workers. For example, Politico wrote: “More moderate Republicans … are wary of a border crackdown and want provisions such as an expanded agricultural [H-2A] guestworker program added” to the pending appropriations bill for the Department of Agriculture.
“It’s Big Ag,” said Jenks. “It’s the owners, the employers, the people who are getting wealthy from corporate agriculture; they’re the ones who are pushing for this, and they’re the ones donating to the members who are pushing for it.”
The big danger, she said, is that after the November election, Democrats would ally with the bill’s supporters to include more H-2As in the year-end appropriations package, she said.
“If Republicans lose in the midterms, this will be a big reason why,” said Jenks. “Their priorities are completely skewed to putting foreign workers and big donors above Americans.”
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