Do H-2A Guest Workers Displace Native Farmworkers?

Abstract

There is persistent evidence of acute labor shortage across farms in the U.S. Because of difficulty in finding willing native workers, more farms are resorting to the H-2A program to hire foreign temporary agricultural workers. In this paper, we study how the H-2A program responds to local unemployment and wages. The results indicate that a decrease in unemployment rate and an increase in AEWR increases H-2A demand. This suggests that farmers only use the H-2A program as a last resort and that H-2A guest workers do not displace native workers.