Union leaders have come together after a new report highlighted concerns over expanding foreign labor, lowering wages, and decreasing working conditions for American workers in industries like meatpacking.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), representing over 15,000 poultry and meatpacking workers, issued a sharp rebuke of proposals to expand the H-2B visa program.
The union’s stance aligned with new findings from an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report, which claimed that the program is harming U.S. workers by suppressing wages and fostering workplace abuses.
“The RWDSU strongly opposes expansion of the H-2B visa program into poultry processing and meatpacking,” said Stuart Appelbaum, RWDSU president. “As the recent EPI report makes clear, this program fuels wage suppression and exploitation, putting workers in precarious, insecure jobs.”
The H-2B program, established under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, allows U.S. employers to hire foreign nationals for temporary non-agricultural jobs when domestic workers are unavailable, per the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Around 100,000 H-2B employees have worked in Texas since 2020, per USCIS’s data hub.
The EPI report claimed the program’s continued issuance of more yearly visas has outpaced reforms to protect workers. It noted that H-2B workers, concentrated in industries like landscaping, hospitality, and meatpacking, are often paid less than national wage standards.
In the top 15 H-2B occupations, certified wages were reportedly up to 24.7% below national averages in 2024, with meat, poultry, and fish cutters earning $4.13 less per hour than the national average, a 22.2% gap.
Both Republicans and Democrats have undertaken the continued issuance of new visas. There is a statutory cap of 66,000 H-2B visas that any given administration can issue per year, but a series of executive and congressional maneuvers allows more visas to be issued.
President Donald Trump’s USCIS ultimately decided to go beyond the statutory cap, after a brief indication that it would stop in May, CREW reported. The Biden administration similarly issued visas to 170,000 workers in 2024, according to EPI’s report.
Union concerns are compounded by a belief that the administration may expand the H-2B program to include year-round jobs, such as in meatpacking.
“Temporary work under the H-2B program is harmful by design and in practice,” Appelbaum said. “It forces workers to live in constant uncertainty, often in unstable and unsafe housing, and leaves workers vulnerable to abuse, setting up a situation where speaking up can mean losing their job or being sent out of the country.”
Appelbaum added that H-2B’s temporary nature traps workers in “cycles of poverty, debt, and fear.”
Some congressional leaders see the issue differently.
Maine Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree said that expanding the visa program is important so that employers have “all the people they need to do the job,” during a conference with colleagues in June.
Pingree warned employers could suffer.
“I have examples of a family here, who had a family-owned seafood restaurant for 17 years,” Pingree continued. “They’ve been able to run their business [and] support local fishermen because they have H-2B workers. Motels, when they don’t have enough people, they close down a wing. They can’t be open for the season that they want because they don’t have enough people.”
Following her comments, the House Appropriations Committee unanimously approved her amendment to the 2026 Homeland Funding Bill that allows certain employers to bring back most workers who have they employed in the last five years without it counting against the statutory nationwide cap.
The bill is still under consideration in the House of Representatives and has not proceeded to a final vote.
Other organizations also want to see reform. The American Immigration Council has advocated for increasing the H-2B cap and streamlining the application process while strengthening worker protections in a 2024 special report.
The EPI report urges Congress and the Trump administration to alter H-2B by ensuring U.S. workers are prioritized for jobs, rejecting year-round expansions, and providing migrant workers with fair wages and a path to citizenship. The report also suggests executive actions, such as requiring higher wages and barring lawbreaking employers from the program.