Challenging Employer Control within the H-2A and H-2B Visa Programs

H-2 Visas and Contratado Legality

The migrants discussed in this article hold either H-2A or H-2B visas—two types of nonimmigrant visas issued by the United States. They permit foreign workers to enter and reside in the United States for the duration of a seasonal or temporary labor contract, generally lasting several months. H-2A visas are issued for contracts in agricultural work and H-2B visas are issued for nonagricultural work, typically in “low-skilled” positions. ¹ When contratados complete their contract—or if they quit or are fired before then—employers notify U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) to cancel their visas. At that time, contratados must return to Mexico, as most do, or remain in the United States without legal status. They may return to the United States as contratados in the future, so long as their former employer or a new one is willing to contract with them again and secure a new visa. Neither H-2A nor H-2B visas provide a mechanism for visa recipients to obtain longer-term legal status in the United States, although adjustments to legal status do happen through other avenues. In fiscal year 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor certified employers’ requests for 242,762 H-2A jobs and 147,592 H2-B jobs, while the Department of State issued 196,409 H-2A visas and 83,774 H-2B visas to fill those positions.

In general, spouses and minor children remain in Mexico while contratados work in the United States. Though family members technically may obtain an H-4 visa to accompany a contratado to the United States, this is rare given that H-2A and H-2B recipients’ family members are barred from working in the United States and are not entitled to benefits provided by employers (as discussed below). It is common, however, for adult family members to travel and work together under their own H-2A or H-2B visas. Usually, these family members are of the same sex since H-2 employers either tend toward an all-male or all-female workforce, depending on the job (Contreras and Griffith 2014).

Employers must be pre-approved by the federal government—a process that usually requires several months. Contratados are authorized to work for just one employer per trip, and they must continue to work for that employer if they wish to maintain their visa status. If they find their employer or job unacceptable, contratados have the right to return to Mexico at any time, but they cannot sign a contract with a new employer on that same trip. Some contratados, however, do seek unauthorized work with other employers (see Griffith 2007). Contratados do have the right to find a new employer for future trips, but the ability to do so is limited by factors that I discuss here.

To receive approval for hiring for an H-2A or H-2B job, employers must produce a standard contract with certain guarantees for the contratados, as well as any U.S.-based workers employed in the same position. The latter category includes U.S.-born workers and immigrants in a variety of different legal statuses who employers simply refer to as “domestics.” Contratados with H-2A and H-2B visas receive similar guarantees. Both have special minimum wage rates that normally exceed state and federal minimums. Both receive free international transportation, paid for by their employers; and both receive a statement of anticipated work hours during the contract period as well as a guarantee that they will have the opportunity to work at least three-quarters of those hours (and will receive compensation for guaranteed but unoffered hours). H-2A workers, but not H-2B workers, are also entitled to free housing while in the United States. Although they lack the right to seek other employment during a given trip, contratados are guaranteed the basic labor rights of other similarly employed U.S. workers. However, as discussed below, contratados often find that these guarantees exist more in writing than in practice.

To hire contratados, employers must also demonstrate that they face a labor shortage among U.S.-based workers and show that they have advertised to find such workers to undertake the same jobs, at the same wages, and with the same guarantees. In theory, employers can hire as many contratados as they want, so long as they are willing to guarantee the minimum required number of hours to each worker. Over time, this feature has allowed agricultural employers to hire a growing number of workers using H-2A visas, which are unlimited under federal law. In contrast, nonagricultural workers face an annual, nation-wide cap of 66,000 new H-2B visas, although U.S. officials regularly provide exemptions, particularly for employers who claim that their businesses would suffer “irreparable harm” to their financial capacities if denied access to H-2B workers.

Over the past 20 years, the relative number of H-2A and H-2B visa recipients has shifted according to data from the U.S. Department of State (2019). Combined, H-2A and H-2B visas rose steadily from 31,717 in 1997 to 180,338 in 2007, before falling to 103,324 in 2010. Total visa issues have risen quickly since then, hitting 280,183 in 2018. Mexicans have consistently received the majority of the visas throughout this period (between 72 and 93 percent). When examined separately, however, the two visa categories show significantly different histories. H-2B visas ballooned from 15,706 in 1997 to 129,547 in 2007 and then crashed in the late 2000s, bottoming out at 44,847 in 2009 before returning to 83,774 by 2018. ² In contrast, H-2A visas displayed relatively slow growth from 1997 to 2006, when the number rose from 16,011 (1997) to 37,149 in 2006. Thereafter the number jumped to 50,791 in 2007 and continued upward to 196,409 in 2018. Although Mexicans predominated in both programs from 1997 through 2017, more held H-2A rather than H-2B visas.

Among H-2A recipients, for example, Mexicans annually received 90–97 percent of visas between 1997 and 2018, with Jamaicans, Guatemalans, South Africans, and Peruvians comprising quantitatively significant minorities. Historically, the H-2A program has generally been an eastern, and particularly southeastern, phenomenon. Data from the U.S. Department of Labor (2018) reveals that Florida is a top destination for H-2A workers in recent years, surpassing North Carolina. Other traditional destinations for H-2A visa holders include Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, and New York. Western states have not been absent from the H-2A visa program, but participation has been relatively low compared with southeastern states, particularly considering the large size of western farm labor markets. In recent years, however, we have seen Washington, and to a lesser extent California, emerge among the top H-2A destinations as undocumented migration has waned.

Mexicans also predominate among H-2B visa recipients with their share increasing from 49 percent in 1997 to 77 percent in 2017. In recent years, most of the remaining H-2B visas have gone to migrants from Jamaica, Guatemala, South Africa, the Philippines, and Britain. Texas is by far the top destination for H-2B workers, followed by Florida. Colorado, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania are also important H-2B destinations. In recent years, H-2B workers have mainly worked in landscaping, grounds keeping, and similar jobs. Forestry, amusement parks, housekeeping, food service, and seafood and meat processing are other important sources of employment for those with H-2B visas. Construction and building trades, once a major source of H-2B employment, have also returned to H-2B hiring in recent years.

Employer Monopoly Control over Contratados

The labor protections guaranteed to contratados seek to improve working conditions and raise wages above those prevailing in U.S. markets, as well as avoid the unauthorized status that complicates many migrant workers’ ability to enforce their labor rights through the state (see Gleeson 2012). The legal rationale behind these guarantees is to prevent contratados from having a negative impact on similarly employed U.S.-based workers. By requiring these guarantees, the logic goes, contratados will not become a cheap alternative to higher-waged U.S. workers. Nevertheless, the H-2A and H-2B programs have become notorious for employer and recruiter abuses, which include wage theft, contract violations, improper termination, employer profiteering from services rendered, and even human trafficking (Southern Poverty Law Center 2013). Formal protections often fail to raise contratados’ working standards above prevailing practices, and Griffith (2007) found that their working conditions generally approximate those of unauthorized migrants.

Researchers point to restrictions that limit contratados’ freedom to change employers as the root of these abuses (Griffith 2006; Geffert 2002), which in practice gives employers a legal monopoly over contratados’ labor during their time in the United States. Although both parties are bound by law to honor the contract provisions, contratados are at a tactical disadvantage in seeking redress for broken labor agreements and employer abuse. Employers are under no obligation to hire contratados individually or together from year to year, and though they are technically held to anti-retaliation laws, cases of retaliation—for example when employers fire or refuse to rehire workers who complain about workplace abuses—are hard to prove and even more difficult to enforce (Geffert 2002).

Rights guaranteed on paper mean little to a worker who is unemployed by the time legal issues are resolved, and attorneys typically counsel their clients to complete as much of their contract as possible before initiating legal action. Further, the freedom to leave an undesirable employer and legally resist unfair labor practices is only meaningful if these actions do not foreclose the possibility of future employment and if there are other viable options for U.S. employment that provide similar or better working conditions. Therefore, it is important to examine the broader question of whether a U.S. employer can in effect exert monopoly control over local recruitment practices in Mexico.

Resisting Employer Labor Monopolies

Anselmo (a pseudonym, as are all subsequent names) is originally from a northern Querétaro community included in the MMP sample. He lives permanently in Florida where he works as a crew leader in the citrus groves. He is responsible for about twenty H-2A contratados who pick oranges under his supervision. Like many crew leaders, Anselmo typically knocks off work on Fridays at around midday so that the contratados can cash their paychecks and buy groceries. Once, however, when his crew received a late order for more oranges, two of Anselmo’s workers balked at staying to work past midday. While the rest of the crew continued on without protest, the two unhappy workers demanded that Anselmo immediately drive them out of the orange grove and back into town.

Anselmo told them that this would shut down production for the entire crew because he had to operate the chiva, a machine that transports the heavy field tubs that pickers fill with fruit. A picker cannot continue picking without a field tub. Anselmo told the two workers that they could sit on the bus and wait, but that he would not be taking them anywhere until the rest of the crew was done with their work. Not long after, Anselmo received a call from his boss demanding to know why two workers were calling the company office to report him for “forced labor.” Anselmo said that he and his boss had a good laugh about the situation once he explained his side of the story.

However, Anselmo was not laughing as he recounted this event to me just one day later. He said that it made him nervous and that some of his workers were always threatening legal action for what he understood to be normal parts of their jobs. In particular, Anselmo and others who manage orange pickers fear lawsuits, and Anselmo’s boss has in the past been sued by contratados. A friend of Anselmo’s from the same home community runs a harvesting company, and he too has been sued twice. These are just three of at least thirty-four separate lawsuits filed against Florida citrus harvesting companies by contratado employees since 2000. Nearly all of them involved wage theft, and nearly all resulted in a settlement or judgment in favor of the contratados. Octavio, another crew leader from the same community, explained to me that he makes sure to warn contratados on his crews to avoid lawsuits, telling them nobody will hire them in the future if their names were to be connected to such an action.

While the accusations of forced labor against Anselmo never reached a sympathetic ear, and while the claims themselves may seem far-fetched, they do illustrate the problems that prevail in contratado workplaces, for three reasons. First, despite their unorthodox nature, the disgruntled workers’ claims of “forced labor” signal a consciousness about labor rights that relies informally on an underlying language of rights, entitlements, and resistance. Second, the encounter also illustrates a more formal appropriation of legal concepts and language that in disputes with management offers lessons for other crew members who watch and learn. Third, the claims from Anselmo’s two crew members are not as far off the mark as they initially might seem, given their reference to the reality of employers’ tight control over the labor and mobility of workers within the United States.

In an interview with the Southeast AgNet Radio Network, one owner of an orange harvesting company said that he liked hiring contratados with H-2A visas because “the people are reliable. I know who I’m going to bring year after year.” Asked why he would not consider other classes of workers, he replied, “You don’t know whether they’re going to be with you or not. Nowadays, everybody has cell phones and the internet, and they can go from crew to crew, company to company, and it’s not reliable.”

What the employer means by “reliability” is that individual H-2A visas require continuous employment in a pre-approved job, with a pre-approved U.S. employer, during a pre-approved work season, giving H-2A employers exclusive legal rights to “their” workers during the contract period. Contratados largely abide by this rule and citrus harvesting companies have found this immobility to be useful. In 2016, for example, a harvesting manager described for Dan Charles (2016) of National Public Radio how his company became the first to use H-2A contratados in Florida citrus:

We were harvesting one of our family groves with a harvesting crew, and directly across the street there was another grove owner who was having trouble getting labor. So he walked across the street, went to our harvest crew, and offered them a nickel more per box to pick his oranges instead of ours. And the crew did that…and that was the day my father said “this is it—we have got to have more reliability in our labor force.” We have been 100 percent H-2A since that day.

Resourceful neighbors have not been the only labor problems faced by orange harvesting companies. The citrus season is long—about half a year—and involves punishing work done on ladders while carrying heavy sacks of fruit. In the past, employers would often lose pickers to other crops and other kinds of work as soon as pickers could find it. They also defected to crews in groves that offered more efficient picking. Labor immobility has become even more crucial as a disease called Huanglongbing has come to decimate fruit yields and undermine the working conditions for citrus pickers. In this context, citrus harvesting companies have found the H-2A program to be a useful means to reign in worker attrition while retaining an on-call labor force that is forced to absorb the ecological uncertainties of agricultural production (see also Higgins 2005).

As most critics of the program would have it, employers’ ability to facilitate mobility across international borders while immobilizing workers within the United States constitutes a strategy of labor discipline that facilitates super-exploitation. Concepts of deportability have also been central to critical analyses of the H-2A program, its contemporary H-2B program, and their antecedent omnibus H-2 program (Hahamovitch 2011). In his work on deportability, de Genova (2005) describes how the ability to expose unauthorized migrants to deportation creates a power differential between employer and worker that influences their interaction whether or not legal status is ever mentioned explicitly. In particular, he points to the effect of deportability in suppressing undocumented worker dissent owing to fears that management may retaliate by outing unauthorized workers to U.S. immigration authorities.

Although documented, the legal status of H-2A workers is temporary and contingent because it relies on the continued concurrence of employers. If H-2A workers are fired mid-season or leave their jobs, they immediately join the ranks of unauthorized workers who are at risk of deportation. Even if they are not hired by someone else and return to Mexico, they are left without a legal means of staying or even returning to the United States, underscoring the crux of the problem. If workers lose their job with one employer, they are unlikely to be hired by another if they gain a reputation as someone who complains about labor standards or works too slowly. As long as contratados believe that these consequences indeed follow from job loss, the implicit threat serves to quell worker protest and legal actions, making them vulnerable to the labor and human rights abuses documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center (2013).

Contratados in Mexican Migration Project Data

The circular migration of contratados from Mexico goes back to the early twentieth century, with the first entries recorded in 1903. The number expanded during the First World War and grew during the 1920s, only coming to an end with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Temporary labor migration resumed with the Bracero Program in 1942, which, through 1964, brought a total of some 4.7 million Mexican workers into the United States for short periods of farm labor. Although Congress created the H-2 visa category in 1952 to accommodate temporary workers, official data reveal no temporary labor migration from Mexico until 1977, when around 2,000 entries were recorded. Until 1986, however, entries by legal workers from Mexico remained under 10,000 per year as jobs formerly held by Bracero migrants in western states increasingly went to undocumented migrants.

In response, Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which legalized some 3 million undocumented migrants, intensified border enforcement, and divided H-2 visas into separate categories for agricultural (H-2A) and nonagricultural workers (H-2B). As border enforcement intensified and migrants increasingly settled and moved out of the agrarian sector, legal temporary labor migration from Mexico increased (see Durand 2006, 54) and accelerated after the 1994 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA; Massey, Durand, and Malone 2002). NAFTA not only created a new TN-class visa category for skilled Mexican workers, it also generated new demand for other visas conferring work authorization in the United States. From 1986 to 2016, annual temporary worker entries from Mexico rose from 12,000 to 843,000 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2018).

The MMP has recorded the migration and experiences of contratados since its inception, though the coding of categories has changed over time in response to shifting immigration policies. From 1987 through 1997 the MMP’s documentation variable contained a single category labeled “Contratado-Bracero.” In 1998 and 1999 it was expanded into two categories, one labeled “Contratado-Bracero” and the other “Contratado-H2.” From 2000 to 2004, the meaning of the first category was clarified as “Contratado-Bracero (1942–1964),” the second category was clarified as “Contratado-H2A (agrícola),” and a third category was added to include other holders of temporary work visas: “Temporal-Trabajador.” From 2005 onward, the second category has been further specified as “Contratado-H2A or H2B,” while the other categories remained the same.

Because the ethnosurvey makes it difficult to distinguish between H-2A and H-2B status, MMP occupational codes can serve as a rough guide for those seeking to distinguish between the two, with two caveats. First, fishery and marine work (Code 415 in MMP Appendix D) and forestry (Code 413) are generally ineligible for H-2A work (Contreras and Griffith 2014; Casanova and McDaniel 2005), and should therefore be interpreted as H-2B jobs, though such jobs are rare in the MMP dataset. In contrast, nursery-related work normally is considered “agriculture” for the purposes of H-2A visas. Second, tobacco harvesting—one of the most common H-2A jobs in recent history—should be coded as agricultural work (Code 410), rather than food, beverage, and tobacco production.

Although the large majority of Mexican contratados go to the United States, since 1974 they have also been eligible to work in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP; see Basok 2003; Binford 2013). Since Mexico’s entry into NAFTA in 1994, the participation of its nationals in this program has expanded, with annual entries reaching around 18,000 in 2007 (Massey and Brown 2011). This program is structurally similar to the H-2A visa program in that Mexicans migrate to Canada with a visa, work under temporary contract for a pre-assigned employer, remain with that employer for the duration of their stay in Canada, and leave the country when their contract ends.

With contextual qualifications (such as the more active role of both the Mexican and Canadian governments in the history and geography of labor migration) research on the Canadian SAWP is broadly applicable to work on H-2A and H-2B programs in the United States (see Binford 2013; Basok 2003; Preibisch 2010; Hennebry and Preibisch 2012; Smart 1997). This comparability is evident in existing volumes seeking to integrate research on the U.S. and Canadian programs (Durand 2006; Griffith 2014). The MMP has been collecting data on SAWP and other forms of Mexico-Canada migration since 2006, and, as of April 2018, the MMP has surveyed fifty-four household heads with migration experience in Canada, with forty-seven of those being in SAWP itself and beginning and ending their experience in Canada. Most of these migrants were from communities in the State of México, but a few were also from communities in the State of Morelos.

Characteristics of U.S.-Bound Contratados

The MMP’s person file covers members of each household and all children of the household head and contains data on 250 individuals in 210 households who, in 1986 or later, undertook a first or last trip to the United States as contratados. Among them, three quarters (74.8 percent) made both their first and last trips in this status with around a quarter (28.4 percent) making just one trip to the United States. Around a fifth (18.8 percent) did not begin their migration history as contratados but ended up in that category on their last trip, with the large majority (87.2 percent) starting out as unauthorized migrants. Only sixteen individuals began as contratados and moved to a different legal status by their last trip, with fourteen of those ultimately becoming unauthorized migrants.

As with undocumented migrants, the vast majority of contratados are male (84.0 percent) and most (57.3 percent) are household heads (including ten women constituting just 4.0 percent of the total). Another 15.2 percent were spouses of the household head (all but one of whom were female), but, in eight households both the head and spouse had experience as contratados. An additional 28.4 percent of the contratados were sons of household heads, and 5.2 percent were daughters. The few remaining of those identified as contratados include a nephew, two sons-in-law, and a father-in-law of the household head.

The 210 households containing contratados are scattered across 40 communities, most notably in the states San Luís Potosí (61 contratados in three communities), Querétaro (60 in four communities), Tabasco (35 in three communities), Tlaxcala (20 in two communities), and México (19 in six communities). Although they are found in other communities located in eleven additional states (Jalisco, Nuevo León, Guanajuato, Puebla, Durango, Michoacán, Morelos, Yucatán, Baja California Norte, Chihuahua, and Hidalgo), contratados in the MMP are highly concentrated in a small number of communities. Most of these are rural villages or small towns, including one settlement in San Luís Potosí with fifty-five contratados, one in Querétaro with fifty-two, one in Tabasco with twenty-five, one in Tlaxcala with eleven, and one in Nuevo León with ten. At the other extreme, 14 communities had just a single contratado and 121 had none at all.

By examining specific combinations of persons, destination states, occupational codes, and first or last trips in contratado status, I have identified 276 unique “job-destinations” in 28 U.S. states that yield a picture of where contratados have been in the United States and what jobs they have held. The list is topped by North Carolina with fifty-five job-destinations, followed by Florida with forty-nine job-destinations, along with a smaller number of destinations in Virginia, New York, Wyoming, and Texas. Among these, only Wyoming stands out as uncharacteristically popular given U.S. Department of Labor statistics on employer requests for H-2A and H-2B workers.

Contratados’ occupations are heavily concentrated in agriculture (153 job-destinations or 55.4 percent of the total), followed by building services (mostly landscapers and gardeners who account for 40 job-destinations or 14.5 percent), and food production services (36 job-destinations or 13.0 percent). In North Carolina and Florida, in particular, agriculture and food production services represent the two most important pathways for H-2A and H-2B migration into the United States in the MMP data.

A few significant patterns serve to describe how MMP contratados fit into the broader pattern of migration under the H-2A and H-2B visa programs. Contratados from a small town in San Luís Potosí with a municipal population of around 10,000 inhabitants are predominately men working in agriculture in North Carolina and Virginia. Contratados from a tiny village of around 1,000 persons in Querétaro are exclusively men working in agriculture in Florida and, to a lesser extent, in New York. Another tiny village of 1,000 in Tabasco has nearly even numbers of men and women who work in food production in North Carolina and to a lesser extent Alabama. Two small Tlaxcalan communities of 3,000–5,000 persons send mostly men and a few women to work in a variety of nonagricultural jobs, almost exclusively in Wyoming. Contratados from six communities in the State of México ranging in size from 2,000 to 18,000 are exclusively men who work predominately in agricultural jobs in North Carolina and Virginia.

The ethnosurvey is not designed to measure satisfaction with one’s employer, leaving open the question to what extent current contratados might desire to change their employers but encounter or perceive a lack of alternatives. ³ What we can see, however, is evidence that contratados can and do access multiple forms of H-2A or H-2B employment during their migrant careers. To get a better sense of contratados’ ability to change employers from one season to the next, we can examine those who changed their destination state or occupation within the United States.

The state is the most tractable level for geographic analysis here since specific U.S. destinations are concealed to preserve confidentiality within the MMP database. Other locations fall outside of established statistical areas or are unknown by informants. In general, the employers of contratados do not operate across state lines, so a change in the state of employment is likely an indicator of a change of employer in the MMP data (though this pattern may be changing). Changes in occupation also likely indicate a change in employer, given the specificity of employers’ contract positions.

To observe these changes in employment in the PERS file, we begin with the 203 people who made their first trip to the United States as contratados, looking specifically at 132 who made two or more trips to the United States. Among those, 10.6 percent completed their most recent trip to the United States as unauthorized migrants, with only 1.5 percent going on to legal residence. As Griffith (2007) points out, exits from contratado status may constitute a form of resistance to the monopoly of employer control under the H-2A and H-2B contract system, reflecting proactive decisions rather than failed attempts to renew their H-2A or H-2B status. To understand contratados’ moves within the contract program, however, a better place to look is among the 116 people who made more than one trip to the United States, with both first and last trips as contratados. Among them, 21.6 percent changed destination states and/or occupations between their first and last trips. Of the 25, 72.0 percent were from a single community of around 10,000 persons in San Luís Potosí, the largest contratado-origin community in the MMP database (though still home to a minority of the total).

These changes in states and occupation suggest that some employment mobility within the contract program is indeed possible, but the figures cited above likely underestimate the true degree of mobility because the MMP data cannot capture changes between employers if they do not involve a change in the state or occupational category of employment in the United States. For instance, during ethnographic work in Querétero, I encountered a number of workers who moved from one harvesting company to another for various reasons—one after missing a work season due to a serious injury in Mexico and another after a major disagreement with a supervisor—but the MMP data cannot capture changes of employment at this intra-local level of detail (in this case because of the community’s specialization in H-2A labor in Florida). What all of these shifts in employment required, though, was social capital, usually a relative or neighbor from the same origin community working for a different citrus-harvesting company. As one of the larger contratado-origin communities in the MMP, my fieldwork site is more likely to offer these opportunities to differentiate the data.

What is perhaps more difficult to know is whether those who made their first and only trip to the United States decided not to pursue further U.S. migration or were prevented from doing so by a lack of new employment options within the contract program. In the MMP database, just seventy-one people had made just one trip to the United States beginning as contratados and maintaining this status, and, of those, 29.6 percent were still on their first trip at the time of the survey. Among the remaining 50, 46.0 percent had completed their last trip within the three years prior to the survey year, whereas 54.0 percent had been inactive as U.S. migrants for more than three years.

Supplementing the person-level data considered above with the more detailed life history data gathered from household heads and spouses may reveal whether and how secondary destinations among individuals with a history of migration occur using H-2A or H-2B visas. Secondary destinations may serve as supplements, or fallbacks, to primary destinations and employers. Since beginning ethnographic work in 2013, I have watched more and more individuals become involved in H-2A migration to New York for its apple harvest. Contratados compare this work favorably to H-2A work in Florida’s citrus groves, reporting that the efficiency of apple work allows them to earn more money more quickly than in the citrus groves. As it is a fairly short season that occurs in the late summer and fall, many contratados manage to complement apple contracts with citrus contracts, with the latter running roughly from December through May and offering more, albeit less profitable, hours over the course of the season.

Conclusion: Beyond the Employer Monopoly

Manuel, a contratado from Querétaro, who I interviewed, surprised me one afternoon in fall 2016. As we sat in his kitchen, he casually mentioned that he had turned down an offer to pick sweet potatoes in the southeastern United States under an H-2A visa. In early conversations with him in 2013, he told me how much he needed work in the United States and that he would take everything he could get, feeling he could turn down nothing. For years before he became a contratado, he and his brothers had moved as undocumented migrants between Florida’s citrus harvests in the winters and summer vegetable season in the Great Lakes. Now he spends his summers at home in Mexico, waiting for his next H-2A visa for citrus harvesting. He tells me he misses the extra income from his former summer work, yet three years after those first conversations Manuel felt no remorse about letting the sweet potato contract go. It would not be enough work, he told me, and not worth interrupting his stay with his wife and children. Besides, he suggested, let someone else see if the pay was enough for the kind of work involved. Then maybe he would reconsider. In the meantime, he had heard his old boss from the Great Lakes was looking for workers again, this time under the H-2A program.

Manuel’s community has been involved with H-2A and H-2B migration for quite some time, as have the communities surrounding his, where many of his friends and extended family reside. As these communities have become more invested in contratado migration, the larger U.S. labor market has been deepening its involvement as well. Manuel’s family, friends, and neighbors now have H-2A connections in multiple citrus harvesting companies as well as in other crops. With the program spreading more widely throughout the United States, Manuel sees the potential to reestablish long-lost connections to employers in other areas and other industries, as his neighbors have already done with employers in New York and the western Great Lakes.

These expanding network connections will not necessarily ensure that Manuel and other contratados will encounter employers that are more inclined to comply with contractual guarantees attached to the H-2A and H-2B program. They do, however, suggest that a growing H-2A and H-2B program can do more than reproduce longer-term conditions of employer monopoly control over contratados’ labor. As such, an expanding H-2A and H-2B program may actually afford an opportunity, however limited, for migrant workers and their advocates to improve their working conditions. At the very least, it would seem to provide additional opportunities for circumventing excessive employer control and provide a greater level of confidence that speaking up against an employer will not foreclose future employment in the H-2A/H-2B program.