While H-1B visas, granted to foreign workers with the intent to be used in specialized fields that require higher education, have been a point of contention in Texas politics over the last few months, another type of foreign worker visa is less contested in the state.
The U.S. Department of State offers a wide range of visa options for foreign workers, but the agricultural sector relies on a specific cohort of foreign laborers working in specialized agricultural industries. Those workers hold H-2A visas, or temporary agricultural worker visas.
While the Texas GOP pushes for stricter guardrails on H-1B visas, the state’s agricultural sector depends heavily on a steady flow of foreign seasonal agricultural laborers.
Requirements for H-2A visas mirror those of H-1B visas and include stipulations that the applicant must be working a “temporary or seasonal” job and also “demonstrate that there are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work.”
According to the American Immigration Council, 2024 data showed that immigrant workers — across a range of visa types — made up 47.8 percent of “miscellaneous agricultural workers.
The report detailed that the top positions for H-2A visa holders worked as farm labor contractors and crew leaders, both in crop production support and greenhouse production.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the number of national H-2A visa applications received by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) increased by over 70 percent between 2018 and 2023.
The Texan spoke with Jay Bragg, associate director of Commodity and Regulatory Activities for Texas Farm Bureau (TFB), who stressed, “Texas farmers and ranchers have become increasingly dependent on H-2A workers over the past 10 years, despite offering competitive wages.”
“If access to the program was reduced, those using it would be forced to scale back production or go out of business.”
Bragg also said that “the H-2A program requires farmers to solicit/recruit U.S. workers before they are able to apply for H-2A visa workers,” citing DOL statistics indicating that “farmers advertised for [around] 418,000 open positions in 2025.”
“Only 183 U.S. workers applied for those positions,” he asserted.
A recent Texas House Agriculture and Livestock Committee hearing addressed issues Bragg raised, with panelists describing Texas agriculture as in “crisis.” Panelists at the hearing voiced concerns that the farming workforce, both laborers and managers, was moving to other industries.
Charlie Leal, state legislative director at the Texas Farm Bureau, stated at the hearing that the number of farmers and ranchers going out of business led him to conclude that “agriculture is being taken for granted by the general public.”
When asked about challenges the TFB sees associated with the H-2A visa program, Bragg responded that because of its seasonal nature, the visa does not cover other industries, including livestock, poultry, dairy, and forestry.
“Farm labor has been a priority issue for decades. Our members simply cannot find the help that they need,” he said.
Bragg also stated that processes need to be “streamlined for both the farmer and returning workers.”
“Ideally, a farmer would be able to easily apply for guest workers without feeling like they need to hire third parties to comply with regulations,” he said. “Wages should be affordable and not escalate.”
In 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration adopted new rules that depressed the wages of H-2A visa holders and included a clause for an “adverse compensation adjustment” to better ensure farms were not paying H-2A laborers higher rates than U.S. workers.
A federal judge eventually overturned the rules last month.
The Texan also spoke with the owner of a major Texas farm who preferred to remain anonymous.
The farmer also commented on the perceived need in the industry for H-2A workers, saying that he thinks that “a lot of folks see the farm work as an inferior job.” He affirmed that their farm, along with other farms, has grown reliant on the H-2A program, but said the process is now “a walk in the park,” compared to how it used to work.
The farmer also said the agriculture industry as a whole, not just the seasonal work sector, needs a more accessible entry point for laborers.
“It takes a specially skilled person who is acclimated to the conditions to handle this,” he said.
Texas Republicans in Congress have supported giving H-2A visas to the foreign workers who want to work in the state. In 2025, U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-TX-15) introduced the Bracero Program 2.0 Act, a bill that aimed to refine the H-2A program by setting the wage rate to minimum wage plus $2.00 per hour, allowing visa holders to change employers within the state without reapplying for the visa, and streamlining the application process to take place in a single portal.
De La Cruz’s office told The Texan that the legislation also expands “coverage to greenhouses and indoor farms,” and extends “maximum contracts to 12 months.” The office also affirmed that the legislation seeks to establish “predictable wage guidelines.”
In her announcement about the proposed bill, De La Cruz stated that it would address Texas’ “workforce challenges” in the agricultural sector while simultaneously disincentivizing “illegal border crossing.”
In 2025, De La Cruz also introduced the Fair Wages for Farm Workers Act. According to her office, the act serves to clarify “wage methodology to ease the administrative burdens and [provide] stability for farmers and workers.”
Many GOP lawmakers see the visa program as an alternative to illegal immigrant labor. De La Cruz’s sentiments have historically been echoed by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who told The Texan, “We need dependable legal labor, and that’s what we get from the H-2A program.”
Miller was optimistic that technology may play a greater role in the future in addressing the industry’s labor shortage.
“We have robotic milkers, we have autonomous tractors, we have unmanned drones that spray crops,” he said, adding that “we’re getting better and better, especially with AI.”
Miller also told The Texan — in consensus with Bragg — that sectors of the agricultural industry suffer from a lack of access to foreign laborers, mostly because of last year’s immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, according to Fox 4.
“We can import our food, or we can import the labor to grow our food. It’s that simple,” Miller stated in a 2018 interview with Farm Progress.
To The Texan, he referenced legislation proposed by De La Cruz when discussing the future of the H-2A program and what changes he hoped to see in the program.
The main problem Miller witnessed currently, he said, was that the “wage scale has gotten out of whack.” He continued, “We would much rather hire a local because it is so much cheaper.”
He added that he saw a need to “refine” the H-2A program, to “make it more efficient, make it widely accessible, make it easier for the guest workers to get up here and stay up here. Everybody wins on something like that.”
Miller also weighed in on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown on the agricultural sector.
“When [it] first started rounding up undocumented workers, they went after dairies pretty hard, but then they backed off. I complained, and others complained. So they really haven’t been bothering them in the last 12 months,” he said.
Gov. Greg Abbott has taken an increasingly hard stance on other avenues for foreign nationals to work in Texas, namely H-1B visas and commercial driver’s licenses for noncitizens, but has thus far permitted H-2A visa developments in the state. Abbott’s most recent move related to the visa program was the proposed enforcement of English language requirements for commercial driver’s license applicants last year. As of this year, H-2A visa-holding applicants are subject to the English language requirement.
The governor’s office did not respond to The Texan by the time of publication.