A visa fraud scheme in Santa Barbara County, California, ended with the sentencing of 65-year-old labor recruiter Jorge Vasquez to one year in prison and an order to pay $165,000 in restitution. Vasquez was convicted of charging tens of thousands of dollars for H-2A agricultural visas.
Vasquez and his co-conspirators recruited 162 Mexican nationals to work for his companies, Cuyama Valley Farms LLC and JJB Farm LLC. Vasquez then applied for H-2A visas for the workers and illegally charged them fees for the visas. He also paid them a lower rate than what the applications claimed.
H-2A visa requirements stipulate that employers must pay for workers’ living expenses, specifically housing, transportation, and recruitment. Employers are barred from requiring payment for visas or charging workers employment fees; yet Vasquez did exactly that and reaped substantial profits.
Although this particular offender was held accountable, the case illustrates structural problems in the H-2A program. Like the H-1B visa, the program was originally meant to be a last resort for employers who could not find enough American workers to fill positions. Yet in practice, companies use it to hire foreign workers rather than Americans because noncitizens will accept far lower salaries.
Amnesty advocates and industry lobbyists in Congress are now pushing to give H-2A visas to all illegal alien farmworkers and drop existing wage levels, locking even more blue-collar Americans out of the agricultural industry. Employers claim they “cannot find any Americans to hire” in the agricultural sector. The truth is that they cannot find Americans able to work at the wages and working conditions they are willing to provide.
Cases like Vasquez are certainly more egregious, but normal use of the H-2A follows a similar pattern of undercutting American workers in favor of easily-controlled cheaper foreign labor.
Immigration policy, including temporary visa programs, should prioritize American workers and extend opportunities to foreign nationals only when clear national interest requires it. When the government permits large-scale entry of low-wage foreign labor, individuals like Vasquez will inevitably seek to exploit the system.
The only durable solution to visa fraud is to eliminate the pathways that enable it. Supporters of expanded immigration present measures such as the Dignidad Act and the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026 as solutions. In reality, those bills would open the door to further abuse. Lawmakers who want the United States to prosper should learn from the Vasquez case, reject dependence on foreign labor, and restore opportunity to American workers by ending the H-1B and H-2A programs as they exist today.