Source: Preston Huennekens, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES, 8/6/18

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Key Points
• Issuances of H-2A visas for foreign agricultural guestworkers have tripled since 2007, growing an average of 13 percent a year.1
• H-2A workers were paid less than the average nationwide wage in 2017.
• Over half of all H-2A workers are concentrated in just five states: North Carolina, Washington, Florida, Georgia, and California.
• The crops with the largest number of H-2A workers are apples, tobacco, blueberries, and "fruits". These four crops, out of 165 crops identified by the Department of Labor, accounted for 20 percent of all H-2A workers in 2017.

Introduction
The H-2A program allows U.S. companies to employ foreign guestworkers in temporary positions related exclusively to agriculture. This separates it from its cousin, the H-2B program, which allows companies to hire guestworkers for non-agricultural positions and is cap-limited.

H-2A, because it is only an agricultural program, has no visa cap. Foreigners with the H-2A visa can stay and work in the United States a maximum of three years before having to return to their home countries, albeit only for a period of three months. After that three months, they are free to apply for the visa again and return to the United States to work.

The program has its roots in the original blanket H-2 visa, which has been on the books since the 1950s. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA, commonly known as the Reagan Amnesty), part of which divided the H-2 program into the H-2A and H-2B visas.2

The H-2A visa is uncapped to encourage as many farmers as possible to legally hire their workers. In a February 2018 Successful Farming article, the author remarked that "the 'elephant in the room' is that many farmworkers are not legally employed in the United States. More than half of all farmworkers are unauthorized to work in the United States, according to a National Agricultural Worker Survey."3

The H-2A program in theory should reduce the number of foreigners working illegally in agriculture jobs, but that clearly has not been the case. A closer look at the H-2A program reveals interesting details.

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