The Last Blow Against Neoliberalism
By 
Friends, it’s finally happened: Donald Trump has embraced populism and American workers.
On the final holiday Friday of this administration, the Department of Labor issued its final rule changes for the H-2A visa program, which governs agricultural workers from foreign countries.
The new rules for this program will affect the roughly 200,000 agricultural workers from other countries who work in American agriculture each year. There’s a variety of new changes in the revised regulations; the Trump administration notes some streamlining, like allowing a single application with varying start dates rather than multiple applications. There will also be mandated digitization of these applications, which the Department of Labor specifically says will be shared with the Department of Homeland Security.
However, the changes, which were outlined in a 722-page document, will also mean that some H-2A workers will no longer be fully reimbursed by their employer for the cost of transportation and food they incur while travelling to the US and back. Under the new regulations, employers will only have to reimburse workers for the cost of traveling from the US embassy or consulate where they acquired their visa to the farm they will work. Labor groups say this will place an undue burden on rural workers who live far away from a city with an embassy or consulate.
Trump is no Joe Biden. That LIB is completely in the pocket of corporate America without the slightest care for the American worker. I wonder how Comrade Hawley feels about this.