CHICAGO — Jeff Flamm, farm owner at Flamm Orchards in Cobden, struggled to find enough workers to harvest his crops — and the problem kept getting worse each year.
"It got down to the point where I left a pretty significant amount of my crop in the field. One year I just couldn't get it fixed. We just did not have enough help to get the job done," he said.
To resolve this labor shortage issue, Flamm turned to foreign workers. For the past 20 years, he has been employing a majority (approximately 80) of his farmworkers from abroad, through an agricultural nonimmigrant visa, the H-2A. As farm labor shortages deepen across the country, the H-2A visa program has become a lifeline for growers who can no longer find enough domestic workers to keep their operations running.
“I came to the realization, if I'm gonna stay in business, I've got to do it,” Flamm said of using the visa program.
The H-2A visa helps address seasonal labor shortages and allows U.S. farm owners to temporarily employ nonimmigrant foreign nationals for agricultural positions, but it can be costly. Farm owners need to meet conditions to qualify as H-2A employers, such as providing free housing, covering transportation fares and paying for the visa application fees. Additionally, employers must prove they cannot fill open positions with domestic workers.
At a time when President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants has sent a chill through the immigrant community in cities and rural areas all around America, this program is an oasis of comfort and opportunity for legal immigrants and a demonstration of the vital importance of immigrant workers in Illinois and on farms across this nation. Many American farmers simply can’t make ends meet without them, and the Trump administration has even moved to streamline the visa program and make it more accessible to farmers.
Illinois ranks 18th in H-2A employment nationwide, with states like California and Florida taking the lead. Illinois’ reliance on legal immigrant farm labor has grown rapidly: About 8% of the state’s hired farmworkers are employed through H-2A visas, with Illinois’ growth rate outpacing the roughly 300% increase observed nationally since 2010, according to data from Farmdoc Daily.
Illinois’ growth reflects a broader nationwide expansion of the H-2A program, with 398,258 positions certified in 2025, out of 415,496 applications, according to the Farm Bureau’s Market Intel. According to USA Facts, an overwhelming majority of applicants are from Mexico, accounting for 90% of filled positions in 2024, followed by South Africa and Jamaica.
Is this strictly a farmworker program, or can roofers and hotels also use it?
Visa helps access labor
Raghela Scavuzzo, associate director of food systems at the Illinois Farm Bureau, said the H-2A program is a vital component of multiple sectors of agriculture in Illinois, impacting the state’s specialty crop industries and conventional agriculture.
“It is a way to access labor that has not previously been available,” she said.
According to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of American farmworkers has significantly declined. According to the Western Ag Network, only 182 farming positions out of over 415,000 advertised were filled by a domestic applicant in 2025, accounting for less than 0.04%.
Maggie Taylor, owner of Delight Flower Farm in Champaign, has also fallen victim to this trend, struggling to employ local farmers. She is now in her second year of using the visa program, having employed two women from Mexico last season. She expected two new workers to arrive by the end of March, but because of the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security causing delays and slower processing, they are now expected to arrive by the end of April.
She emphasized how these workers are professionally performing physically intense work that is otherwise deemed undesirable by Americans. “These workers are professional farmers. They are so good, such a high caliber of work and so efficient, that is amazing," Taylor said.
“I felt like, if I didn't do the H-2A, I would want to quit farming,” Taylor said.
Flamm has been renewing the visas of a lot of his workers every season.
“Why do I keep doing it? Because that's the only way I can get the job done,” he said. “I can't hire. I have virtually zero local applicants for those jobs.”
Beyond solving the labor shortage problem, Taylor sees the visa program as a mutually beneficial arrangement, sustaining her farm while providing meaningful income for workers who send their earnings back to their families abroad.
“I see this as a win-win,” she said.
Taylor also pointed to the program's seasonal structure as an unexpected advantage. Unlike year-round employees who often leave during the winter and do not return, H-2A workers come only during the agricultural season, with their visas being valid only for up to 10 months, reducing turnover and keeping her workforce stable.
"I think the security of knowing that I'm going to have people to work on my farm and that they're going to do a good job is such peace of mind, and it really makes my farm business sustainable," Taylor said. "Hopefully the same women will want to come back year after year, and we all get to grow together and get more efficient over time."
Red tape and costs burden employers
To have H-2A visas approved, an employer needs to prove they have the resources to house the workforce. Flamm houses his workers in units he owns on his own land. Taylor however, needs to rent out spaces to accommodate her H-2A employees.
“You have to apply (for housing) 75 days before you want their contract to start,” Taylor said. “So that means that I'm basically paying for a vacant house at least 80 days,”
Employers also need to pay visa application costs and cover air-fares and transportation for the workers to safely arrive at the site.
“For my farm, it was around $12,000 in extra expenses beyond their wages that I would pay for,” Taylor said.
Both farmers said filing these applications is a long bureaucratic procedure, and find it difficult navigating the Department of Labor, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State.
Effective Oct. 2, 2025, the DHS issued a new rule, aimed at strengthening the H-2A visa program and easing the application process. The rule states that the DOL will streamline the application review process that ensures the visa does not harm American workers. It will also speed up the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ reviewing process for visa petitions.
The labor department also made efforts to reduce the red tape, establishing the Office of Immigration Policy in June 2025. The department aimed to create a “one-stop shop” to allow employers to apply for the visa through one single portal instead of doing so via three different agencies.
The office was intended to improve coordination among the federal departments and streamline the application and processing of employment-based visa programs, including the H-2A. However, internal emails obtained by Investigate Midwest showed that as of March 2026, the Department of Labor was unsuccessful in delivering on these goals, with officials failing to coordinate within agencies.
When hiring workers through the H-2A program, employers are required to comply with federally mandated wage rules.
“(The) H-2A visa has a required payment plan. All these positions have specific salary requirements,” said Scavuzzo, the Illinois Farm Bureau official. “Oftentimes, the salaries can be very high depending on those positions, which can limit how many people that they can bring over.”
The Department of Labor has set a new Interim Final Rule surrounding the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, the minimum wage for agricultural workers in the H-2A visa program.
Higher-skilled workers paid more
Employed workers on the H-2A are divided into two categories based on their skill level, with higher-skilled workers being paid more of the adjusted wage. The minimum hourly wage for each category will be determined using data reported by the Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for each state.
Before the rule, the 2025 rate in Illinois for H-2A farmers was $19.57 an hour. Now, the rate is set at $15.48 for entry-level workers and $18.75 for experienced employees, according to Farm Week Now.
Estimates calculated by the Economic Policy Institute show that farmworkers across the country stand to lose $4.4 to $5.4 billion annually because of the change.
Robert Anthony Bruno, a professor and director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said this adjustment primarily benefits employers over workers, and that requiring farmers to pay for housing should not justify lower pay for hired farm hands.
“It should be an additional benefit that the employers contribute along with paying them the required hour of pay,” Bruno said.
The AEWR has been adjusted to compensate for the free housing provided. Minimum wages for Illinois H-2A workers has decreased by $1.79 per hour, according to Farm Week Now.
“We were like on a boat with a hole in it, and it was getting pretty close to being full. So it was a much-needed reset,” Flamm said.
Scavuzzo said these changes can help Illinois farmers manage labor costs, which will in turn allow farms to hire more workers and sustain output in the years ahead.
“These policies which decrease the minimum wage are imperative — this way the number of farm workers employable will rise,” she said.
Georgia Epiphaniou is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
The H-2A visa has become a lifeline for farmers who can’t find enough domestic workers
The H-2A visa has become a lifeline for farmers who can’t find enough domestic workers
