Latest news with #Spani

Business Standard

Immigrant crackdown hurting farms and hotels, Trump says changes coming

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would soon announce an immigration order in response to complaints from US farmers and hotel owners struggling with labour shortages triggered by his crackdown on undocumented migrants. 'Our farmers are being hurt badly... and we're going to have to do something about that,' Trump said at a White House event. 'We're going to have an order on that pretty soon, I think... and leisure, too—hotels.' He reiterated this in a post on Truth Social: 'Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.' He claimed that many immigrants that entered the US under President Joe Biden are applying for such jobs. 'This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming,' he said. The president did not give any details on what the new order might contain or when it would be implemented. Farmers say deportations are hurting harvests Agricultural industry groups in the US have repeatedly pushed back against mass deportations, warning that removing workers without legal status would severely disrupt the food supply chain. According to figures from the US departments of Labor and Agriculture, nearly half of the country's 2 million farm workers, as well as large numbers of dairy and meatpacking workers, are undocumented. Protests erupt as non-criminal workers targeted In recent weeks, protests have taken place across major US cities in response to workplace immigration raids and deportations, particularly in Los Angeles. While Trump had pledged to remove undocumented immigrants as part of his 2025 campaign, critics, including some supporters, have questioned why long-time workers without criminal records are being targeted. White House open to visa reform but says Congress must act US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told CNBC that while Trump was exploring executive action, 'most of the changes have to be made through Congress.' 'The president understands that we can't feed our nation or the world without that labour force, and he's listening to the farmers on that,' Rollins said. She said the White House was 'looking at every potential tool in the toolkit,' including expanding or reforming temporary visa programmes such as the H-2A. The H-2A visa allows US employers to hire seasonal agricultural workers from abroad if they can prove a shortage of willing and qualified American workers. However, India is not currently on the list of designated countries eligible for this visa programme. Who are the undocumented farm workers? While country-wise data is not available, here's what figures from the Centre for Migration Studies in New York show: < Nearly half of US farm workers are undocumented, according to government estimates < Most speak a language other than English at home < 93% speak Spanish, followed by 4% English, 2% South and Central American Indigenous languages < Other languages include German (0.25%), Tagalog (0.20%), and Afrikaans (0.15%) < 42% do not speak English at all < 34% speak English 'not well' < Only 4% speak only English Indians in the undocumented population While specific data on undocumented Indians in US agriculture is unavailable, the Migration Policy Institute estimates that about 375,000 Indian nationals were part of the 11.3 million undocumented population in the United States as of mid-2022. India ranked fifth overall, and first among Asian countries, as a source of unauthorised immigrants.