H-2A Visa Program
Are you a farmer who needs seasonal or temporary workers for planting, cultivating, and harvesting crops but domestic workers are in short supply?
About the H-2A Visa Program
The H-2A temporary agricultural workers program – often called the H-2A visa program – helps American farmers fill employment gaps by hiring workers from other countries.
Get started here by:
- Learning the H-2A visa application basics
- Creating a personalized H-2A visa application checklist built around your hiring needs
- Estimating the costs of hiring workers through the H-2A visa program
Already started an H-2A visa application? Check the approval status of your cases with the Department of Labor or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. To track the status of your cases over time, sign in or sign up for a farmers.gov H-2A dashboard account through login.gov.
The H-2A temporary agricultural program helps employers who anticipate a lack of available domestic workers to bring foreign workers to the U.S. to perform temporary or seasonal agricultural work including, but not limited to, planting, cultivating, or harvesting labor.
Depending on the type of work you need, temporary or seasonal agricultural work can happen on farms, plantations, ranches, nurseries, ranges, greenhouses, orchards, or other similar locations.
- Seasonal work is when you need more help than usual because the work is tied to a certain time of year by an event or pattern, like a short annual growing cycle.
- Temporary work lasts no longer than 1 year.
If you have been affected by a strike, work stoppage, or layoff within 60 days of when work will start, you may not qualify for the program.
To participate in the program, you’ll work with your State Workforce Agency to earnestly recruit U.S. workers. The State Workforce Agency will publicly post your job order to recruit U.S. workers. You must accept eligible referrals of U.S. workers who apply for the job, and also contact any former U.S. employees at their last known contact address. When a qualified U.S. worker applies, you must employ them until 50 percent of the work period specified in the work contract has passed. After 50 percent, there is no continued affirmative obligation to hire.
If you are a foreign worker looking to apply for a job through the H-2A Visa Program, learn more at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Steps for Participating in the H-2A Visa Program
Learn about the basic steps for hiring new workers through the H-2A visa program and for extending the employment contract for current H-2A workers. Then create your personalized H-2A visa checklist through our interactive tool.
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