The Disturbing Abuse of H-2A Visa Workers in America
by Barbara Martin, Indivisible 1431
The H-2A visa program is a set of regulations that allows employers to bring foreign nationals into the United States to perform agricultural work. H-2A workers perform temporary or seasonal agricultural jobs, primarily planting, cultivating, and harvesting crops like fruits, vegetables, and nursery plants, but also tasks like pruning, operating farm equipment, tending livestock, packing produce, and maintaining farm infrastructure. Employers must prove there is a lack of available U.S. workers for the jobs and that H-2A workers won’t negatively impact the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers.
There is a strong connection between the Trump administration’s intensified deportation efforts of undocumented immigrants and the surge of H-2A visa workers coming to America. With the Trump deportations, farm owners are left with no workers to harvest their crops. H-2A visa workers are the solution and are being imported into the US at an alarming rate to meet this need.
In 2023, Prism, Futuro Investigates, and Latino USA, found many labor rights violations against H-2A workers. Centro de los Derechos del Migrante found that 100% of H-2A workers interviewed experienced at least one serious legal violation, and 94% experienced three or more. Although H-2A workers are in the US legally, they are being abused and deprived of basic human rights.
The Department of Labor (DOL), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of State (DOS) oversee the H-2A visa program. DOL, the main regulatory agency, has failed to enforce their rules and provide adequate oversight for these workers. Further, at this time, DOL is now proposing changes to rules passed in 2024 which will rescind more employer requirements further reducing worker rights. The DOL proposes using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics Survey (OEWS) to calculate the H-2A program’s Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR). This rule revises agricultural wage rates for all 50 states and Puerto Rico allowing for different wage rates for different qualifications. This will result in wage reductions for H-2A visa workers but save employers about $2.46 billion in wages. How can this be fair?
Currently H-2A workers are only allowed to reside in the U.S. for three years, then they must leave the country. After three months they can apply for another H-2A visa if they want to return. Increasingly employers are taking advantage of this requirement by charging a processing fee for H-2A applications and transportation back into the U.S. Workers are further charged for housing and food essentially leaving them in debt and indentured.
Crisanto Serrano, a legal immigrant from Sunnyside, California, worked for a mushroom company for over 40 years. When he went back in January to put in his application to be called back to work, his application was canceled. Farm businesses are now only contracting H-2A workers.
To illustrate: in 2021, Frank Javier Zavala Martinez was recruited in Mexico to work for Manzana in Connecticut. Zavala worked for three years as an H-2A worker. Upon arrival, he found that living conditions were substandard and was a shed in a labor camp with over 200 workers sleeping on air mattresses or bunk beds separated by garbage bags. Raising concerns with his employer, he was told, “Well, if you don’t like it, you can find somewhere else to live.” Zavala worked for up to 60 hours/week at Casertano Greenhouses with no holidays or time off. Zavala became suspicious when he discovered Manzana was charging workers for reapplications and transport to America. Zavala had to take out a high-interest loan to cover his travel costs — which should have been provided by his employer — and was later charged fees to be recruited back the following season. Workers have no transportation so they must buy their food and other items from the employer’s stores with inflated prices. Most workers had to go into debt and take out interest loans to cover housing and food expenses.
According to the most recent National Agricultural Workers Survey, 70% of our agricultural workers are immigrants. A USDA survey found approximately 300,000 H-2A workers in 2022, a 15% increase from 2021, and a 300% increase since 2012. Estimates of 350,000-380,000 were allowed in in 2024 and an estimated 600,000 will be brought in by the end of 2025. These hundreds of thousands of workers are tied to a single employer for their worker’s immigration status leading to conditions resembling forced labor.
On July 20, 2022, Daniel Costa with Economic Policy Institute testified before the Subcommittee on Workforce Protection in the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor. Costa testified that despite numerous and egregious cases of worker abuse, exploitation, human trafficking, wage theft and even deaths Congress and federal agencies failed to protect these workers.
To address some of these issues, DOL in 2024 published the Farmworker Protection Rule to shield workers from employer retaliation, prohibit employers from confiscating passports and exclude employers from the program who commit violations. Sadly, DOL is now proposing changes to this rule rescinding many of its protections.
The current administration is apparently setting up a system like indentured servitude or sharecropping to counteract the effect of immigrant farm workers being deported out of the country. Unfortunately, there has been no substantial legislation passed to regulate employers and address the ongoing abuse of these workers. With the steady increase of H-2A visa workers into the United States, it is imperative we demand our legislators file and pass laws to hold abusive employers responsible for violations against H-2A workers. We should all demand protection for H-2A visa workers who harvest the food we put on our table. We should not allow companies to flourish at the cost of human rights!
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