Republican Senator Wants New Migrant Worker Program, Citing Labor Shortage

A Republican senator introduced a bill on Monday that would allow states to run visa programs to fill labor shortages.

Senator John Curtis (R-UT) announced the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2026 to empower states to expand the number of foreign workers given visas, according to Deseret News. The proposed program would allow states to bring in up to 5,000 migrant workers per fiscal year, plus a proportional cut of a separate 245,000-visa pool based on population.

The bill also caps state-sponsored visas at three years.

Under the bill, visa holders who have been in the United States illegally since December 31, 2016, would have a path to legal residency. The illegal immigrants seeking residency would be required to pay a $1,000 “penalty,” according to the bill’s text.

Curtis, who introduced the proposal alongside Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), said his state is in desperate need of workers.

“I’ve heard time and again from small business owners, farmers, and ranchers across Utah how difficult it has become to hire enough workers to meet growing market demands,” Curtis said in a statement.

“Our legislation would help fill the gap by creating a pilot program allowing states to sponsor visas tailored to their unique economies, without sacrificing rigorous federal vetting or accountability,” he added.

The proposal comes after House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA) recently introduced a separate bill to provide illegal immigrant farmworkers with a path to temporary legal status. Thompson’s bill quickly faced an onslaught of criticism from immigration hawks.

Gregory Bovino, the former Border Patrol official who led the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids in Minneapolis and other major cities, said the bill’s Republican backers “just stabbed Trump’s deportation promise in the back.”

“They’re only gonna get the message one way. Vote every single one of them out in a massive wave, and replace them with real immigration hawks. Anything less, and they’ll never take us seriously,” Bovino wrote in a recent X post.

For supporters of the bill like John Hollay, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, the Visa plan is viewed as a necessary tool to address a yearslong farming “labor crisis.”

“They can’t get the help they need to harvest their crops and astronomical labor costs have pushed many lifelong farmers to the brink of bankruptcy,” Thompson said.

“This is happening because the very program that once kept farmers in business is sinking under the weight of bureaucratic costs. Without reform, the H-2A visa program may now be the reason these same farms cannot be passed on to the next generation,” he said.