The Trump Administration’s Department of Labor is pushing to lower the minimum wage for foreign workers brought in under the H-2A visa program by warning that the Trump Administration’s Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement policies are increasing the risk of food shortages by arresting and deporting undocumented farm workers, the American Prospect reports.
Seriously. “The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for US consumers,” the memo says, adding “this threat will grow” because of the Big Beautiful Bill’s $100 billion check for ICE expansion.
The Soviets had a lot of this kind of bureaucratic infighting too. Agriculture and labor were often the subject but sometimes it went in interesting other directions, like with that big futz-up at Chernobyl.