In May, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that, except under “extraordinary circumstances,” non-immigrant visa holders must return to their home countries to apply for green cards—a process that could effectively eliminate most traditional pathways to permanent residency or citizenship for many visa holders residing in the United States. 

This is just one part in the Trump Administration’s brutal immigration crackdown, which has focused on mass deportation, broadened policing and enforcement, expanded detention, expedited removals, and travel bans, among other measures. As the announcement makes crystal clear, the Trump Administration is interested in targeting not only undocumented immigrants they consider “criminal” but also those who are here legally and seeking more permanent status.

At the same time, President Donald Trump has quietly expanded the guest-worker program, nearly doubling the number of seasonal guest workers for 2026. It has also made it easier and cheaper for farmers to hire H-2A workers and suspended enforcement of a Biden-era farmworker protection rule. 

At first glance, mass deportation and heightened immigration restrictions may seem at odds with the expansion of guest-worker programs. But in fact, they are mutually reinforcing. The Trump Administration is increasing access to temporary migrant labor while making undocumented migrants more vulnerable and stable legal status harder to secure for many others.

I would argue that Trump is not simply cracking down on immigrants while separately adjusting labor policy; he is reorganizing migration in a way that makes workers more temporary, more dependent, and easier to expel. In doing so, the White House threatens to make long-term belonging more difficult for immigrants. 

But Trump is not doing anything new. The same logic structured the Bracero Program that began in 1942. Then and now, the United States has tried to separate labor from belonging: to welcome migrants’ work while denying them stability, rights, and permanence. Although the Bracero Program officially ended in 1964, its logic remains whenever the United States treats migrant labor as essential but migrant belonging as unacceptable. 

Bracero Program workers in 1963. Bettmann—Getty Images

Started in 1942 as a supposed remedy for labor........

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