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On May 27, 2017

The numbers are out — and they confirm what we’ve been hearing from farmers and immigration lawyers. More and more farmers are turning to foreign “guest workers” to plant and harvest the country’s crops. Farmers have to get permission from the U.S. Department of Labor to bring in foreign workers using a category of visa called H-2A. During the first three months of 2017, the Department of Labor approved applications to fill 69,272 farm jobs with workers on H-2A visas. That’s up from 50,887 positions approved during same period a year ago, an increase of 36 percent. The H-2A visa program has been growing steadily in recent years, mostly because farmers have had increasing difficulty recruiting enough workers here in the U.S. Previous increases, though, ranged from 10 to 20 percent per year, far short of the big jump so far in 2017.