Temporary Mexican labor migration to the U.S. is largely legal today due to the rapid expansion of H2-A and H2-B visas, reversing a longstanding trend of unauthorized migrant flows

UCLA International Institute

One of the main impacts of social science research is overturning enduring assumptions based on outdated information. Research based on the latest empirical data can have particularly salient impacts when the subject is Mexican labor migration to United States.

The research of Ruben Hernández-León, professor of sociology and director of the UCLA Latin American Institute, has focused on the migration of Mexican workers to the U.S. and their return to Mexico throughout his career. He recently published an article with colleague Efrén Sandoval (CIESAS-Noreste, Mexico) on the explosion of U.S. H2-A and H2-B visas over the last 20-25 years.

H2 visas are granted to foreign workers to do temporary agricultural work (H2-A) or heterogeneous “low-skilled” work (H2-B, which covers temporary work in such varied fields as landscaping, tree trimming, hotels and resorts, fisheries and seafood processing) in the U.S. In the late 1990s, the combined annual total of the two visas was slightly more than 30,000. By fiscal year 2025, the total had jumped to roughly 455,000: an increase of over 1,500%.

“The growth of these visas has been connected to a very important transformation in Mexican migration over the past roughly 20 years: the channeling of formerly unauthorized flows to legal channels,” remarked Hernández-León.

Although technically open to workers from around the world, the vast majority of these time-limited visas are currently granted to Mexican workers (90% of H2-As, 65–70% of H2-Bs). Many of these workers return year after year to work for the same employers for a specified time period and then return home. “They become sort of career H2-visa workers,” said the professor. “Workers establish relations with employers. And employers want people who they trust, who they know will get the job done.”

The total number of Mexicans who annually receive H2 visas and travel legally to work in the U.S. is now conservatively estimated at 500,000. “This is roughly the same number of undocumented migrants who were crossing the border — south to north, from Mexico to the United States — during the heyday of undocumented migration in the late 1990s and early 2000s,” said Hernández-León.

Several major forces have pushed Mexican worker migration from an undocumented to a documented pipeline. First, pointed out the UCLA professor, “A very profound demographic change has been taking place in Mexico over the past 20 to 30 years. Mexican families are now having very few children, so there are fewer entrants into the general labor market.” Second, the migrant Mexican population in the U.S. is aging, especially farm workers, and these older workers are being replaced by H2 visa holders. Finally, border enforcement has made it increasingly difficult for employers to hire undocumented workers.

“A great many undocumented workers continue to work in U.S. agriculture, and the majority are still from Mexico,” continued Hernández-León, “but agribusinesses are using more and more H2 visas to get their workers, despite their complaints about the process.”

Mexican labor migration has traditionally been circular

The advent and growth of H2 visas, noted the professor, “has permitted a restoration of circulation, which was an old feature of U.S.-Mexico migration, but less so during the so-called undocumented years.”

One of the largest programs to bring Mexican workers to the U.S. on a legal basis was the Bracero Program, which ran from 1942 to 1964. “It was a bilateral agreement between the Mexico and the U.S. to bring millions of temporary workers to the U.S. from Mexico through the use of visas and contracts,” said Hernández-León.

When the program ended in 1964, observed the researcher, “The most important legal channel for Mexicans to work in the U.S. was closed. Labor migration did not end, however; it continued and even grew, only to become a largely unauthorized, irregular flow between the two countries for some 40 to 50 years.”

Travel to and from the U.S. on the part of migrant workers continued until border controls tightened in the 1990s, eventually making it difficult for them to return home. As a result, a large population of undocumented migrants stayed and settled in the U.S, said Hernández-León. They continue, he said, to work in agriculture and other industries where jobs either have very low social status in U.S. society or where surges of workers are needed seasonally.

Dilemmas and contradictions of the H2 visa regime

As opposed to the original Bracero Program, which was a bilateral treaty, the H2 visa regime — which amounts to a Bracero II program, albeit on a smaller scale — is operated entirely by the U.S.

Workers are thus unable to turn to the Mexican government to address such abuses as exploitative wages, factory town prices for local goods, “bribes” levied by brokers for U.S. employers, lack of water and shade in the fields and grossly substandard living quarters. Instead, they are largely left to turn to state authorities for enforcement of their contracts, a process that is spotty at best and varies by state.

H2-A visa workers are also being used by agribusinesses to pressure undocumented farm workers living in the U.S., who are beginning to organize unions to demand better working conditions and wages, observed Hernández-León.

“Whether or not the wages of H2-visa have a negative effect on the wages of U.S. workers,” commented the professor, “what U.S. employers are doing is not really satisfying temporary shortages. They creating a regular binational workforce.” And while the legal Mexican agricultural workforce remains small compared to the total agricultural U.S. workforce, it plays a significant role in harvesting, a critical step in the food production process overall.

“Temporary Mexican migration to the U.S. is largely legal now,” concluded Hernández-León. “That actually goes against a very established idea, which at this point is largely a myth, that the flow of migrant workers from Mexico is largely unauthorized. Employers have to petition H2 visa workers through the Department of Labor and Mexican workers have to clear Homeland Security inspections and interviews to receive these visas.”

This story was originally published via UCLA’s International Institute, here.