H-2A: Slavery, Debt Bondage, and Other Abuses

Fact Sheet - Monday, March 10, 2025

Federal Oversight Agencies: DOL, DOS, DHS
Dependents: H4

The Basics:

• Notorious for exploitation, the employer-sponsored and numerically uncapped H-2A visa category is for temporary or seasonal agricultural employment. 

• Employers must petition for the alien so the alien worker’s status depends on the employment relationship with the employer/sponsor. 

• H-2A employers must attempt to recruit American workers and prove that no American workers are willing and able to do the job. 

• H-2A employers are also subject to the Department of Labor's calculated Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), which effectively serves as a minimum wage for H-2A visa holders. The AEWR's goal is to mitigate the suppression of the wages offered to American workers due to employers using H-2A visa workers as cheap labor.

• H-2A employers must provide free housing and transportation to and from the worksite for H-2A  employees.  

• The number of H-2A visas requested and approved has increased more than sevenfold in the past 18 years, from just over 48,000 positions certified in fiscal year 2005 to around 378,034 in fiscal year 2023.

The Problem:

• According to the Department of Agriculture, roughly 40 percent of the agricultural workforce is comprised of illegal aliens, despite the exponential rise in H-2A usage and the fact that the visa category is uncapped. 

• Operation Blooming Onion found forced labor within the H-2A program.

• The Economic Policy Institute reported that the DOL opened a record-low number of investigations in 2022, even though the H-2A program was growing and is known for fraud. 

• Farmworker Justice’s study, “No Way to Treat a Guest,” found that the H-2A program drove down wages for both foreign and domestic workers and was rife with fraud and abuse. 

• An 18-month H-2A investigation by PRISM also found widespread abuse of the program, including wage theft, debt bondage, squalid living conditions, and violence and threats of violence. 

• The agriculture industry is a perennial resident on the DOL’s Low Wage/High Violation industry list. 

• The AEWR has not protected American job opportunities or raised farm worker wages.

• The availability of unlimited H-2A visas, as well as large numbers of illegal aliens, has incentivized agricultural employers to prioritize cheap labor, and has discouraged mechanization and investment in capital. 

LEGISLATIVE RECOMMENDATION: Congress should mandate the use of E-Verify by agricultural (and all other) employers to prevent the employment of illegal aliens. Any employer found to have exploited or abused H-2A workers or rejected American workers in order to employ H-2A workers should be permanently banned from the H-2A program. The nationals of any country with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States should be barred from participating in the H-2A program. (If it isn’t safe to return illegal aliens to a country, we certainly shouldn’t be admitting temporary workers, who will be expected to return to that country when their visas expire.) Congress should increase the AEWR to incentivize employers to either recruit American workers or invest in capital (mechanization). Congress should also recognize the national security and public safety implications of importing a foreign serf class to produce America’s food supply and consider providing tax incentives or other subsidies for mechanization investments. Alternatively, Congress should eliminate the H-2A visa, which would naturally incentivize mechanization.

ADMINISTRATION RECOMMENDATION: The Labor Department must invest resources into real oversight of the H-2A visa program and vigorously investigate and prosecute abuses. Any employer found to have violated the terms of the visa program or abused H-2A workers should be denied future H-2A visas. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should dedicate resources to worksite enforcement on farms, to identify and remove illegal workers, to ensure that H-2A rules are being followed, and to prosecute employers violating the law.

Additional H-2A Resources

Government-Sourced Resources:

DOJ 51 Count indictment for H-2A violations, including threatening workers who attempted to leave or alert authorities. 

DOJ 35-count indictment for using H-2A for forced labor. 

DOJ announced the 70 month sentence for an illegal alien who recruited aliens through the H2A program to exploit them. 

DOL Wage and Hour consent judgment of $427K against H-2A employer for wage theft, safety violations and housing violations. 

Wage and Hour Division found that Titan Fruit & Vegetable Co. Inc. violated H-2A program regulations by requesting workers make political contributions, which resulted in the workers' adverse effect wage rate falling below the required $11.13 per hour; and by charging workers a cleaning fee, paid to a local cleaning crew, for the employer-provided housing.

DOL Wage and Hour finds egregious violations by H-2A employer who confiscated workers’ passports immediately after they arrived, failed to pay weeks of wages to more than a dozen workers, did not pay the inbound and outbound transportation expenses for workers, and charged workers fees between $150 and $8,000 to participate in the federal program.

DOL found an H2A contractor owed $1M in back wages and penalties for repeated violations and abuse of H2A employees.

DOL fined an H2A employer 13K and recovers $131K in back wages for multiple violations. 

DOL review of Ag employers found:

"In a series of investigations from April 2020 to February 2022 by the department’s Wage and Hour Division, several farms were found to be failing to meet their responsibilities under the H-2A program. The investigations found five farmers failed to provide meals or kitchen facilities, did not pay required inbound and outbound transportation and meal costs, and allowed workers to be transported unsafely. The division also determined some farms shortchanged workers’ wages and failed to provide a contract to workers as required or did not abide by the terms of workers’ contracts.

The five investigations led to the recovery of $225,114 in back wages for 588 workers, and assessments of $54,617 in penalties."

Wage and Hour recovered $45K from an H2A employer for failing to pay AEWR

GAO found: "that H-2A violations accounted for 54 percent of back wages assessed to all agricultural employers during the 6-year period GAO reviewed."

Jury found H-2A employer liable to H-2A workers for $500K due to exploitation and wage theft. 

Private Investigations, Studies, and Surveys

Farmworker Justice found wage theft, debt peonage, discrimination, abuse, squalid living conditions, and slavery in their investigation into H-2A. 

ProPublica wrote:

"In the summer of 2019, a crew leader tasked with overseeing farm laborers sent them to harvest corn in a field where they weren’t authorized to work — and where there wasn’t adequate protection from the sweltering sun. One of them died of symptoms of heatstroke.

Five months later, a crew leader for another Georgia farm kidnapped and brutally assaulted one of his workers who had escaped.

Two years after that, a third crew leader confined workers to housing surrounded by an electric fence so they couldn’t try to flee.

These and other recently documented abuses were carried out by third-party middlemen, or farm labor contractors, who were hired by farm owners to recruit and supervise foreign workers. Those contractors had found ways to wield power with near impunity over hundreds of workers at a time. Federal prosecutors spent years revealing the scope of the problem in Georgia, in a giant labor-trafficking case that launched in 2016 and is now nearing its conclusion.

The evidence in that case led prosecutors to liken the abuse to a form of modern-day slavery."

Polaris Project details how H-2A is commonly used to collect fees from H-2A employees so they are in debt bondage. 

Also from Polaris Project:

"From 2018 through 2020, the Trafficking Hotline identified 2,841 H-2A visa holders who were victims of labor trafficking. The majority of these individuals were males from Mexico. One of the most common methods used to control workers on H-2A visas was threatening to report them to immigration authorities who would deport them if they did not fall in line with the trafficker’s demands. A full 58 percent of labor trafficking victims on H-2A visas reported being threatened with immigration consequences such as deportation if they demanded promised wages or decent living and working conditions. Thirty-two percent were also threatened with being blacklisted from returning to the United States to work — a significant threat to people whose survival depends on these seasonal jobs. Additionally, 58 percent of workers reported working excessive hours, and 41 percent said that their earnings were withheld or taken. 

A migrant advocacy group surveyed H-2A workers across multiple states and found widespread abuse."

The Denver Post found wage theft and coercion in the H-2A program. 

The Economist wrote about South African H-2A workers replacing African American farmworkers. The New York Times also covered this discrimination against American workers. 

Buzzfeed News published four articles highlighting H-2A abuses.