H-2A visas for white South African workers have surged 1,300% since 2011

Every year, hundreds of thousands of foreign workers come to the U.S. to fill temporary agricultural labor shortages through the H-2A program — a system first introduced in 1986 to address shortages in farmwork.

From 2011 to 2024, the use of the program grew more than 400%, with nearly 90% of visas going to workers from Mexico.

But the fastest-growing group is from South Africa – and predominantly white, according to private and federal lawsuits.

While South Africans consist of only 3% of the program, their numbers have climbed by 1,300% according to data from the State Department between 2011 and 2024, and the rate of increase far outpaces any other nationality.

The rapid rise has collided with legal scrutiny.

Since 2022, the Mississippi Center for Justice, a law firm focused on advancing racial and economic justice, has filed seven lawsuits on behalf of Black farmworkers in Mississippi, alleging they were paid less than temporary workers from abroad who were mostly white men from South Africa.

Each of those lawsuits were settled out of court with significant compensation and back pay, according to attorney Rob McDuff, who represented the plaintiffs. The latest case, filed in May, is still pending.

“This is the latest version of an age-old problem in America, in terms of the treatment of Black farmworkers,” McDuff said.

The Department of Labor, under the Biden administration, conducted its own investigation following those initial lawsuits and found 44 additional agricultural employers in Mississippi to be in violation of the H-2A program’s law. By 2023, the department’s Wage and Hour Division had recovered $505,000 in back wages for 161 workers whose rights were violated. Employers were also required to pay an additional $341,838 in civil money penalties.

The South African Chamber of Commerce in the USA, a non-partisan, independent organization and business association, promotes the work program to its citizens. After the lawsuits, the organization worked with the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa to make the H-2A program more inclusive and diverse.

The federal government tracks the country of origin for visa holders, but does not collect data on which businesses hire those workers. Agricultural companies in the southeast host the largest number of H-2A workers in the nation.

Because South Africans speak English and their growing and harvest seasons are the opposite of North America’s, they make attractive candidates.

“You can get any nationality you want in H-2A, and we chose South Africans because their English is better,” Joel Brown, a farmer in Missouri, told Farm Progress. “There are a lot of large farms in South Africa, and some of these guys are coming off those farms.”

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