Bill would lower farmworker wage floor, speed visa approvals
H.R. 6847 — Fair Wages for Farmworkers Act · Filed by Mónica De La Cruz (R-TX) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Dec 18, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill changes how the federal government calculates the minimum wage that U.S. farms must pay temporary H-2A visa workers. Instead of using a method that may set wages higher, the bill requires the Department of Labor to use state-level occupational wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It also allows the Department of Homeland Security to begin processing H-2A visa petitions before the Department of Labor finishes certifying that the job cannot be filled by U.S. workers.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism lowers the wage floor for temporary farmworkers by switching to a lower-baseline wage-calculation method and accelerates visa processing before domestic labor protections are verified. The net effect is to reduce labor costs for agricultural employers.
What the text implies
- Concurrent processing of H-2A petitions before labor certification is complete may bypass the statutory requirement to demonstrate no available domestic workers, weakening the protective intent of the H-2A program.
- State occupational wage data may not reflect agricultural-sector-specific wages and could systematically understate the true prevailing wage in farming, compounding the downward pressure.
The full analysis lists 3 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
agricultural employers and farm operators; large-scale farming operations