H-2A guestworker program triples in last decade

The Department of Labor has released its latest statistics for the H-2A Agricultural Guestworker Program. They confirm that in the last ten years, the program has tripled in usage.

“This program was designed to handle only a small portion of U.S. agriculture’s overall labor need. However, this rapidly increasing demand is far outstripping the federal government’s ability to make guestworkers reliably available to farmers,” said Kam Quarles, vice president of public policy for the National Potato Council.

In 2008, H-2A handled 86,000 temporary guestworkers annually. Today that figure is over 242,000 with Washington, New York, North Carolina, Michigan and Florida all in the top ten states with the most demand. The Office of Foreign Labor Certification received 11,806 H-2A applications in FY 2018.

An effort to develop a modernized and more efficient guestworker program as part of a larger immigration reform bill failed in the House of Representatives this year.

View the latest statistics for the H-2A Agricultural Guestworker Program here: H-2A Selected Statistics FY2018 Q4

Source: NPC Insider Report, National Potato Council