“Without [this guest worker program], I believe agriculture in the US would decline a lot because people there don’t want to do the work,” Mendez said.

As the fate of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers remains in limbo amid Donald Trump’s mass deportation threats, and the administration’s H-2A policies are undecided, the future of these guest workers remains unclear. Their numbers grow each year – and they are increasingly central to an industry historically dominated by undocumented workers. The industry isn’t creating new jobs either.

Farmers agree with farm workers like Mendez. They say they cannot attract other workers to their rural fields.