Farm Guest Workers: US Experience

Philip Martin

Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, 2025, vol. 12, issue 3

Abstract: The US was one of the first countries to develop farm guest worker programs with Bracero programs during WWI and WWII outside regular immigration laws, followed by the H‐2(A) farm guest worker programme included in immigration law in the 1950s. The US tried to legalise the farm workforce in the mid‐1980s, but wound up spreading unauthorized workers throughout US agriculture and the nonfarm economy. Fewer unauthorized farm workers arrived after the 2008–09 recession, which helped the H‐2A programme quadrupled to 400,000 jobs over the past decade, so that guest workers fill 20 percent of average US crop employment. The farm labour market is at a crossroads, and is considering options that include labour‐saving machines, aids to raise productivity and H‐2A workers, and changing to non‐labour‐intensive crops and importing labour‐more intensive commodities from lower‐wage countries.

Date: 2025
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