This article is a collaboration between The Guardian and independent bilingual publication Enlace Latino NC.
On a cold December afternoon, about a dozen workers load the last Christmas trees of the season onto trucks at Wolf Creek Tree Farm and Nursery in Cullowee, North Carolina. Nearby, another group is taking a break to stay warm around a barrel fire. Many more workers are working in fields deep in the mountains, about 30 minutes away by car.
It’s the last working day of the 2025 season, and the atmosphere is relaxed, even cheerful. The men came from Mexico as temporary agricultural workers under the H-2A visa program and are expected to return home soon to celebrate Christmas with their families.
Nahuel Hernández Nabor has been traveling from Tlaxcala in central Mexico to western North Carolina for 26 years. He arrives every April because caring for these trees is a year-long job that requires weeding, fertilizing, pruning, and dosing with pesticides. But the most intensive work begins in November.
“Last week, we worked from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.,” he told the Guardian and Enrace Latino North Carolina in Spanish. “We cut the trees, tie them, transport them and load them onto trailers.”
The hardest part, he says, was the time away from his wife and two children, a 19-year-old son and a 17-year-old daughter. He tries to call them every day, but it’s not always the same.
Still, Nabooru, 50, will likely return to the United States next April. But he’s not sure. The U.S. Department of Labor recently enacted new wage guidelines for H-2A visas that could reduce wages by $5 to $7 an hour, potentially saving employers as much as $2.5 billion annually. The move is one of many changes the Trump administration’s immigration policy introduced this year that could reduce the number of H-2A workers coming to sustain North Carolina’s Christmas tree industry.
“We’re doing it for the money,” Nabors said. “If it’s not worth it, we won’t come.”
What you need to grow an American Christmas tree
According to the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association, nearly one in four Christmas trees sold in the United States comes from North Carolina. The main reason is the native Fraser Fir, popular for its natural pyramid shape, needle retention, and strong pine scent. Nearly all of the state’s 940 growers are concentrated in western North Carolina, where Christmas trees are the No. 1 crop. In 2022, sales from more than 3 million trees contributed more than $144 million to the state’s economy.
It’s difficult to know how many H-2A employees support the Christmas tree industry. Leticia Zabala, co-coordinator of El Futuro es Nuestro (It’s Our Future), a worker-led nonprofit that supports North Carolina’s immigrant and visitor farmers, suggests that number could reach 4,000 at peak harvest.
The Beutel family has owned and operated Wolf Creek Tree Farm since 1949 and has participated in the H-2A program since its inception in the mid-1980s. It is the nation’s largest temporary visa program, issuing visas to 318,000 workers in fiscal year 2024. In response to the Trump administration’s rhetoric about replacing immigrant labor with American nationals, the Department of Homeland Security in September announced changes to the program to process H-2A visas more quickly. Experts say the move shows the administration recognizes that U.S. agriculture cannot operate without immigrant workers.
“We don’t really have any other kind of workforce in mind,” said Renee Beutel, Wolf Creek’s founder’s daughter and current president. “We do have some local people who come to work for us, but they usually don’t last long.” (Beutel is a member of the Real Christmas Tree Committee and the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association, but spoke to the Guardian as an independent farmer.)
At Wolf Creek, the first group of seasonal migrant workers will arrive in February. The Christmas tree begins its life in the nursery. After two years, they are transplanted into the field to leave room for growth. Once the tree reaches 4 feet, it is ready to be pruned annually to maintain its iconic shape. All in all, it takes about eight to nine years to grow a 6- to 8-foot Fraser Fir, and requires many hours of care.
“Every year we have to mow it. We have to mow around it. We have to fertilize it. We take soil samples every year to see if the soil will grow a good Christmas tree. Unfortunately, we have to spray the tree,” Beutel said. Workers at other tree plantations have experienced negative health effects from pesticides and herbicides, especially when pressured by growers to work without waiting for the chemicals to spread.
Marianne Martinez, CEO of Vecinos, a nonprofit that provides free health care to migrant workers in western North Carolina, said the repetitive physical labor takes a toll on the body. Vecinos staff frequently treats musculoskeletal problems such as carpal tunnel syndrome, as well as vision problems caused by sun exposure and seasonal allergies.
Then there’s the strain on mental health. “There’s a lot of isolation and psychological challenges, especially coupled with the fact that our region has traditionally had very poor access to the internet,” Martinez said. Vecinos has been installing hotspots on farms for the past six years to help workers connect with their families.
Still, it’s difficult. “Here, you have to cook for yourself, so you can just get home (in time) and make lunch for the next day,” said Margarito Salcido, who has worked at Wolf Creek for 13 years. “I cook, do laundry, and then wake up again at 5 a.m. the next day to prepare lunch.”
Supporting families back home means sacrificing mobility and autonomy. The men live in housing provided by their employers, who are also required to either provide laundry facilities, weekly trips to the laundromat, or trips to the grocery store or cooking equipment.
Isolation, language differences, and having to rely on employers for basic transportation and amenities mean these legal contract workers may be vulnerable to abuse. As previously reported by the Guardian, some employers are withholding food and equipment or offering lower-quality meals. Contract workers work in extreme heat and cold. Christmas tree workers in North Carolina have been organizing for the past few years, complaining of low pay, sickening effects from toxic chemicals sprayed during tree planting, and extreme long hours to ensure trees are on store shelves in the fall.
“It’s like being in prison,” Salcido said of his work in the United States in general, and especially during the harsh logging season. Working hours from October to early December are typically 12 hours, often seven days a week. The men who come to plant trees in January to survive the early winter are looking forward to returning home at the end of the year and for the next month. “When you come to Mexico, you feel like you’re free,” Salcido says.
fear factor
While workers like Salcido and Nabor describe the work as a tedious necessity to earn a better living for their families back in Mexico, Roberto Ceballos sees it differently. Over 14 seasons, he’s experienced it all here. She fell in love, studied law online, made enough money to support her family in Durango, and is on the verge of finishing her home.
But this season feels different. Although the Trump administration has largely avoided targeting farmworkers and their communities, Ceballos was concerned. “We were watching on the news that these ICE officers had no respect for citizens or even legal residents,” he said. “It scared us a little bit.”
Beutel is unaware of the lack of ICE or Border Patrol agents in the area this season. Siembra NC, a Durham-based nonprofit, has no reports of such activity on its real-time map of ICE sightings across North Carolina. Still, she encourages workers to have documentation ready whenever they leave the farm, and Zavala said many producers advise their workers to do so. Zavala has also heard reports that some workers are limiting their travel from farms to Walmarts and laundromats to ensure their safety.
Much of that fear, she says, comes from a feeling that simply looking Latinx is enough to put people at risk, or put them at risk, given the rise in racial profiling. “Both the immigration situation and the new rules lowering wages have many workers seriously considering whether to come back next year,” Zabala said.
The biggest concern for both employers and employees is the change in wage guidelines. Beutel doesn’t want to cut wages for his workers, but he fears other producers will.
“They work really, really hard,” Beutel said of the staff.
Ceballos hopes other producers like Beutel realize the value of experienced workers. “It’s not good business for them to start over with people that they have to train from scratch,” he says. But he also knows that in such volatile political times, it pays to plan ahead. “My intention is to keep coming here and to have a possible Plan A, Plan B and Plan C no matter what happens,” he said. He said some workers have even discussed going to Canada.
“We feel like what we do, the work we do, is not appreciated,” he says. “We are an economic pillar not only for Mexico, but also for the United States, because we send part of the paychecks we receive to Mexico and part of it is spent in Mexico. So when our wages are cut, yes, we feel bad and humiliated.”
Salcido was more blunt: “$11[an hour]is too little.”
Zabala said workers face significant power imbalances and severe upheaval in the industry. Recruiters and producers often remind them that they are fungible. “If you don’t come, there are 100 people waiting in line,” she said. And the tariffs are rattling U.S. agriculture even as the federal government has announced billions of dollars in one-time aid to farmers affected by the tariffs themselves.
“There is a lot of concern and uncertainty,” Zabala said. “We’ll have to see what happens next.”
immigrant grinch
Our region, which is still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helen in September 2024, needs these workers and this industry. Rising equipment costs and the growth of the artificial tree market pose ongoing existential threats to the industry, but few changes will have as big an impact as drastic reductions in the workforce. Despite reporting a strong growing season, growers urged the public to be patient with select plots as at least some farmers are struggling to find labor.
“If we…don’t sell any more Christmas trees because there are no more trees coming out of the fields, that would be a devastating blow to our local economy,” Martinez said. But she also noted it would have ripple effects beyond North Carolina. Wolf Creek alone transports trees as far as Idaho and Texas.
“We serve the entire country,” Martinez said. “I’m going to look like the Grinch.”
