H-2A Visa Program: Requirements, Wages, and Protections

The H-2A visa program lets U.S. agricultural employers hire foreign workers for temporary or seasonal farm jobs when not enough domestic workers are available. It is the main legal channel for seasonal farm hiring in the country, with nearly 400,000 positions certified in fiscal year 2025.¹ Two agencies share the work: the Department of Labor issues the labor certification, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approves the visa petition. The rules that follow, on wages, housing, recruitment, and worker treatment, apply the moment you enter the program, and the penalties for missing them are steep.

Who Qualifies to Use the Program

An employer can use H-2A only when the job is temporary or seasonal. “Seasonal” means tied to a recurring event or pattern, such as a short annual growing cycle. “Temporary” means the need lasts less than a year, unless the work is a genuine one-time occurrence that will not repeat.²

The work must also be agricultural: cultivating soil, harvesting crops, or raising livestock, bees, or poultry. Jobs that happen to sit on a farm but lack a direct link to producing agricultural commodities do not qualify. Before any petition is approved, the employer has to show that no qualified U.S. workers are available and willing to do the job at the time and place needed.¹

How the Application Process Works

Every step in H-2A has a deadline counted backward from the first day you need workers. Start late and it is difficult to recover.

The Job Order

Between 75 and 60 calendar days before work begins, you submit a job order to the National Processing Center on Form ETA-790/790A. It lists the exact start and end dates, work locations, duties, number of workers, and any required experience. The National Processing Center transmits it to your State Workforce Agency, which posts the opening and advertises it to domestic job seekers.³⁴

The Labor Certification Application

Form ETA-9142A is the formal application, filed through the Department of Labor’s Foreign Labor Application Gateway. The Chicago National Processing Center reviews it.⁵ A key component is the recruitment report, which logs every effort to hire domestically and gives the lawful, job-related reason any U.S. applicant was not hired.

Recruitment does not stop when you file. Federal law requires positive recruitment to continue until the H-2A workers actually leave for the worksite.⁶ If DOL concludes the recruitment was perfunctory or the rejection reasons do not hold up, the certification is denied.

The USCIS Petition and Consular Interview

Once DOL issues the Temporary Labor Certification, you file Form I-129 with USCIS.⁷ Fees vary. A small employer or nonprofit filing online with unnamed workers can pay as little as $460. A regular employer filing on paper with named workers pays $1,090 plus a $600 Asylum Program Fee, bringing the total above $1,600.⁸

After USCIS approves the petition, workers interview at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate in their home country. The visa application fee is $205.⁹ A consular officer verifies eligibility before issuing the visa, which permits entry for the duration on the certified job order.

What You Must Pay Workers

An H-2A employer pays the highest of four wage benchmarks: the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), the prevailing wage for the occupation and area, any applicable collective bargaining rate, or the federal or state minimum wage. The AEWR almost always sets the floor because it runs well above minimum wage in every state.¹⁰

AEWRs come from the USDA’s Farm Labor Survey and vary by state. For 2026 non-range occupations, they run from roughly $14.83 per hour in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to $20.08 per hour in Hawaii. Range occupations (herding and livestock on open range) use a separate monthly rate of $2,132.41 effective February 2026.¹⁰ Rates update annually, so check the current figure before each season.

The Three-Fourths Guarantee

Every H-2A employer must guarantee work hours equal to at least 75% of the workdays in the contract period. A workday is the number of hours stated in the job order, excluding the worker’s day of religious observance and federal holidays. A 10-week contract with a 48-hour workweek and one federal holiday, for instance, would require guaranteeing at least 354 hours of work.¹¹

If actual work falls short of that guarantee, the worker still gets paid the difference. Offering work on enough days does not satisfy the requirement if those days do not include the full hours listed in the job order.¹² This is one of the most common compliance failures auditors find, often because employers underestimate weather delays or seasonal fluctuations when drafting the contract.

Housing, Transportation, and Meals

If workers cannot reasonably return home at the end of each workday, the employer provides housing at no cost. The housing must meet OSHA’s standards for temporary labor camps, which include at least 50 square feet of floor space per person along with minimums for drainage, ceiling height, water supply, and toilet facilities.¹³ Government inspectors verify sanitation before workers arrive.

Employers cover daily transportation between housing and the worksite at no cost, using safe and properly insured vehicles. The larger obligation is inbound and return travel. Once a worker completes 50% of the contract period, the employer reimburses reasonable travel and daily subsistence from the worker’s point of origin to the job site, unless it advanced those costs upfront. When the contract ends or a worker is dismissed early for any reason, the employer owes return transportation.¹¹

For 2026, daily subsistence during travel is $16.78 without receipts, or up to $68.00 with receipts. These rates took effect April 7, 2026.¹⁴

Where the employer provides meals, it can charge up to the daily meal maximum, which tracks the subsistence minimum at $16.78 per day for three meals as of April 2026. Employers who do not provide meals give workers access to kitchen facilities. Either way, the cost cannot reduce a worker’s earnings below the required wage rate.

Worker Protections You Cannot Skip

Employers, their agents, and any foreign labor recruiters they use cannot charge workers fees related to the H-2A certification process, including recruitment costs. Employers also have to put that prohibition in writing in any contract with foreign recruiters and produce documentation on request.¹⁵ Fee-charging by overseas recruiters remains one of the most persistent problems in the program; workers charged fees can report the violation to the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.

Every H-2A employer carries workers’ compensation insurance covering on-the-job injuries and illness for the entire employment period, regardless of whether state law would otherwise require it for agricultural workers. When the employment falls outside state workers’ compensation coverage, the employer buys equivalent private insurance at no cost to the worker. Before DOL issues the certification, the employer submits proof of coverage with the carrier name, policy number, and coverage dates.¹¹

Tools, supplies, and equipment required to do the job come at no cost to the worker. The employer cannot deduct from wages for items that are primarily for its own benefit, and any deduction not spelled out in the written work contract is not allowed.

Tax Treatment

H-2A wages get an unusual tax treatment. Compensation paid to H-2A workers for agricultural services is exempt from Social Security and Medicare taxes, whether the worker is a resident or nonresident alien. Employers should not report Social Security or Medicare wages on the worker’s W-2 or on Form 943.¹⁶

Federal income tax withholding is not required either, unless the employer and worker voluntarily agree to it through a completed Form W-4. Without an agreement, the employer does not withhold. The main exception is backup withholding: when a worker fails to provide a Social Security number or ITIN, the employer withholds 24% on payments of $600 or more.¹⁶ Getting these rules wrong creates problems during audits, especially for employers used to standard payroll for domestic workers.

Penalties and Debarment

DOL can impose civil money penalties for each violation of the H-2A work contract or program requirements. The inflation-adjusted maximums effective January 2025 include up to $2,166 for a standard violation, up to $7,289 for a willful violation or an act of discrimination, up to $7,289 for failing to cooperate with an investigation, up to $21,649 for improperly rejecting or displacing a U.S. worker, and up to $72,164 for a housing or transportation violation causing death or serious injury (rising to $144,329 for repeat or willful violations of that kind).¹⁷

The Office of Foreign Labor Certification runs post-certification audits requiring documentation that the labor certification’s terms were followed. The Wage and Hour Division conducts separate investigations that review payroll, interview workers, and inspect housing and vehicles. Investigators also check whether non-H-2A workers doing the same tasks received the same wages and protections.

The most serious consequence is debarment, which bars an employer, agent, or attorney from the H-2A program entirely. Grounds include failing to pay required wages, refusing to hire qualified U.S. applicants, displacing domestic workers, using H-2A workers outside the approved job order, charging prohibited recruitment fees, fraud in the application, and impeding an investigation. A single egregious act showing flagrant disregard for the law is also enough.¹⁸ Debarment periods are set case by case and can take effect quickly when the employer does not contest the finding.

Using an H-2A Labor Contractor

Not every farm files its own petition. An H-2A Labor Contractor can file on behalf of multiple agricultural businesses and supply workers by contract. Labor contractors carry the same obligations as direct employers for wages, housing, and transportation, plus one extra: they must obtain a surety bond before DOL will issue the certification.¹⁹

The bond has to cover potential wage and benefit liabilities and stay in force for three years after the labor certification expires. If DOL judges the standard bond amount insufficient given the contractor’s history or the size of the operation, it can require a higher bond. The contractor also submits copies of every work contract with the farms it supplies. For a farm without the administrative capacity to run the H-2A process directly, a labor contractor can simplify the paperwork, but the underlying legal obligations still travel with the work.

1
U.S. Department of Labor. H-2A Temporary Agricultural Employment of Foreign Workers
2
eCFR. 20 CFR 655.103 – Overview of This Subpart and Definition of Terms
3
eCFR. 20 CFR 655.121 – Job Order Filing Requirements
4
Farmers.gov. Create Your H-2A Visa Checklist
5
U.S. Department of Labor. H-2A Agricultural Clearance Order Form ETA-790A General Instructions
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1188 – Admission of Temporary H-2A Workers
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers
8
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. G-1055 Fee Schedule
9
U.S. Department of State. Fees for Visa Services
10
Flag.dol.gov. H-2A Adverse Effect Wage Rates
11
eCFR. 20 CFR 655.122 – Contents of Job Offers
12
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 26E – Job Hours and the Three-Fourths Guarantee Under the H-2A Program
13
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 29 CFR 1910.142 – Temporary Labor Camps
14
Flag.dol.gov. H-2A Meals and H-2A and H-2B Subsistence Rates
15
Federal Register. Recission of Final Rule – Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment
16
Internal Revenue Service. Foreign Agricultural Workers
17
U.S. Department of Labor. Civil Money Penalty Inflation Adjustments
18
eCFR. 20 CFR 655.182 – Debarment
19
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 26H – H-2A Labor Contractor (H-2ALC) Surety Bonds