Aliens in the Orchard: The Admission of Foreign Contract Laborers for Temporary Work in U.S. Agriculture

An employer may lawfully bring unskilled aliens to the United States for temporary labor only pursuant to §§ 101(a)(15)(H)(ii) and 214 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Approximately 30,000 aliens are admitted under these provisions each year to fill a wide variety of temporary jobs. This foreign labor program (commonly referred to as the H-2 program ) has a major impact in certain agricultural markets. Farm laborers constitute by far the largest single group of H-2 workers, recently amounting to over thirty-five percent of all admissions. More-over, only in agriculture are contract workers admitted en masse to form the dominant local workforce