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.
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.
“This is a welcomed policy change for our dairy members, and we are hopeful it is just the beginning of continued H-2A program expansion,” John Hollay, president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, wrote in a press release. “By opening the door for the dairy industry to take advantage of the only legal program for foreign agricultural workers, President Trump continues to move us in a direction of needed reform.”
The administration’s initial announcement was light on details about which dairy farm roles now qualify for H-2A visas.
The updates to the H-2A program are dairy-specific, and the USDA made no indication of changes to the visa’s one-year duration, or a maximum of three years with extensions.
Wisconsin’s agricultural sector increasingly relies on the H-2A program to meet its labor needs. Wisconsin farmers’ annual H-2A hiring increased at least six-fold over the past decade, and the White House’s ongoing immigration crackdown has amplified the program’s importance as a source of workers with legal status.
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.
So far, nearly all H-2A workers on Wisconsin dairy farms are heavy equipment operators, at least according to farmers’ applications to the Department of Labor. Many, including the workers on Woldt’s farm, are from South Africa.
Fellow Calumet County farmer Kurt Schneider also hires South African H-2A workers to harvest his feed crops. “It’s because they speak English,” he said, and the ease of communication justifies the cost of flying in a crew from across the Atlantic. South Africans make up the second-largest cohort of H-2A workers after workers from Mexico, outnumbering the third-largest nationality — workers from Jamaica — more than 3-to-1 in 2024.
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. “That’s our culture,” he said. “We don’t want to change our culture.”
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For Schneider, the H-2A program could offer a more stable workforce than the current cutthroat competition between farms allows. The pool of often-undocumented 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. “I’m getting really sick of (it),” he said. “Somebody’s paying 50 cents an hour more and they jump ship.”
The Trump administration cut the program’s minimum wage last year; workers on Wisconsin farms classified as “less-skilled” now receive a minimum $12 per hour this year, down more than a third from their 2025 minimum wage. Woldt says she hasn’t cut her crew’s wages, hoping “to keep the guys we have” rather than competing with other farmers for new workers next season.
The USDA’s announcement didn’t specify where dairy workers will fall on the wage scale.
While a seasonal H-2A crew would also require regular turnover, Schneider said his farm’s current attrition rate justifies the switch. “We’re having bottom 10% turnover anyway,” he said, as new dairy hands move along in search of higher wages. “They’re only there two weeks or a month, and they leave, and you’re constantly training.”
But he isn’t inclined to let go of his current crew. If the new rules allow him to hire dairy hands through the H-2A program, Schneider said he would apply for enough visas to backfill openings as they arise, even if that means some visas go unused.
That strategy could also limit the risks of relying entirely on the H-2A program. A backlog at an American consulate in South Africa delayed the arrival of Schneider’s harvest crew this spring. Farmers pay steep overhead to secure H-2A visas, and when delays force workers to book last-minute flights, costs often skyrocket. Program rules require farmers to cover workers’ plane tickets and lodging, so delays can inflate the up-front costs of participating in the program — or, if a farm relied entirely on H-2A workers, possibly leave cows unmilked.
Processing delays also hit Woldt’s team this year, forcing one of her workers to return to South Africa while awaiting approval of his visa extension. She has no immediate plans to hire dairy hands through the program. “We’re good in that department,” she said.
National agricultural groups also tempered their praise of the new rule change with acknowledgement of the H-2A program’s capacity problems.
“For this expansion to succeed and the H-2A program to work as intended, our federal agencies must have the resources and regulatory structures necessary to handle the increased volume efficiently,” Hollay wrote.
Republican U.S Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents western Wisconsin, introduced legislation last fall to create an alternative to the H-2A program by allowing some undocumented agricultural workers to self-deport, pay a fine and return to the U.S. through a legal port of entry to resume working in agriculture. “The H-2A program is broken and it sucks,” he quipped during a presentation on immigrant labor at the World Dairy Expo in Madison last fall. Van Orden’s bill did not advance out of committee.
The Trump administration suspended Biden-era rules intended to crack down on abuses of H-2A workers last June. Wisconsin’s migrant labor law preserves some protections the Department of Labor no longer guarantees, including workers’ rights to invite legal aid providers and clergy into their employer-provided housing.
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