Immigration

NY Times -    For years, the agricultural sector has faced a tight labor market as farmworkers age and fewer new immigrants and younger Americans are willing to toil in the fields. Top Trump administration officials vowed that mass deportations would help, leading to “higher wages with better benefits” and a “100 percent American work force.”

But the administration has quietly acknowledged in recent months that its immigration raids and crackdown on the border have aggravated the issue. So it has instead turned to an alternative source, making it cheaper for farmers to hire immigrant farmworkers on temporary visas.

Many farmers have celebrated those changes, made to an increasingly popular visa program known as H-2A, noting the difficulty in hiring American workers and tough economic conditions for the industry. But immigration hawks and labor unions alike are opposed, arguing the move will only increase the share of foreign workers and hurt native workers and suppress their wages.

The simmering debate underscores how some of the administration’s top goals of reducing immigration, keeping food prices low and helping American workers may inevitably conflict. The competing interests at play also show the spillover effects of Mr. Trump’s hard-line approach to legal and illegal immigration.

MS NOW - The White House seems to know it is losing its immigration fight in the court of public opinion. A sign of that came recently when a White House deputy chief of staff reportedly urged House Republicans in private to stop emphasizing “mass deportations” and focus instead on efforts to remove violent criminals, argues Zeeshan Aleem. But a change in messaging may not be enough to stop a slide in support for Trump’s approach to immigration, and warning signs abound that his own voters may be splitting over the issue. Read more.