H-2A Temporary Agricultural Job Certifications Continued To Soar in 2022

U.S. agricultural employers anticipating a shortage of domestic workers can fill seasonal farm jobs with temporary foreign workers through the H-2A visa program. The U.S. Department of Labor certified around 370,000 temporary jobs in fiscal year (FY) 2022 under the program, more than 7 times the number certified in 2005 and double the amount in 2016. A certified job does not necessarily result in the issuance of a visa; in fact, in recent years only about 80 percent of jobs certified as H-2A have resulted in visas. Under Department of Labor eligibility rules, employers must show that their efforts to recruit U.S. workers were not successful before a job can be certified. They also must pay H-2A workers no less than the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), which is set at the region’s average hourly wage for crop and livestock workers in the previous year, as measured in USDA’s Farm Labor Survey. Even with these restrictions, the H-2A visa program has grown rapidly in recent years as U.S. domestic workers find jobs outside agriculture and fewer newly arrived immigrants seek agriculture jobs.