Immigration Law as Development Policy: The H-2A Visa Program

客工计划为临时移民创造收入，同时允许东道国满足国内劳动力需求，解决劳动力短缺问题。目前的研究表明，临时移民的经济回报--无论是对外国工人，还是对本国和整个东道国--都是可观的。仅在美国，每年就有100多万名临时外籍工人受雇于农业和非农业领域。然而，我们对客工和客工寄给家人的汇款如何改变国内的消费行为、塑造家庭内部动态以及对儿童教育和人力资本的投资知之甚少。我们的研究重点是持H-2A签证来美国的农场工人。我们的研究将能够评估参与客工计划如何帮助家庭摆脱贫困；客工计划在多大程度上替代了未经授权的移民；以及他们获得的工资是否可以威慑犯罪行为和参与非法经济，如毒品种植。了解美国移民政策是否以及为什么能够在海外产生发展影响，对于改革现有的管理外国劳动力的计划，以及为有关临时移民、粮食安全和扶贫的政策辩论提供信息，将是至关重要的。这项研究的重点是H-2A项目，该项目通过随机对照试验(RCT)向在美国农场工作的临时或季节性农业劳工发放最长一年的签证，该项目将操纵潜在客工的移民身份，以便通过比较“治疗”和“对照”群体之间的差异，了解在国外获得临时工作如何改变经济、社会学和意识形态结果。对于这个项目，处理组将由获得来宾签证的人组成，而控制组将由没有获得来宾签证的人组成。调查人员将在个人和家庭层面衡量结果，并将收集与人类发展、受害、非法行为以及政治、公民和社会态度有关的指标，使用远程高频调查工具，调查人员还将收集移民从美国到美国然后返回家乡的所有阶段的数据；这将使调查人员能够测量客工的最终位置，而不是他们是否离开了自己的家乡。调查人员还将设法通过跟踪其控制组中未获得客工签证的人员的位置，直接量化经授权和未经授权的移民形式之间的替代。这项研究的结果将有助于为国内移民政策的制定提供信息，并有助于正在进行的关于H-2A项目改革的对话，该项目长期以来一直在缺乏严格的影响评估的情况下运作。我们还寻求对旨在确保粮食安全和减轻贫困的国际和国内政策的对话做出贡献。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Guestworker programs generate income for temporary migrants, while simultaneously allowing host countries to fill domestic labor demands and address labor scarcity. Current research suggests that the economic returns to temporary migration—both for foreign workers as well as for the home and host countries at large—are substantial. In the United States alone, more than one million temporary foreign workers are employed annually in both agricultural and non-agricultural capacities. However, we know very little about how guestwork and the remittances that guestworkers send to their families alter consumption behaviors back home, shape intra-household dynamics, and investments in children’s education and human capital. Our study focuses on farmworkers who come to the U.S. on H-2A visas. Our study will be able to assess how participation in guestworker programs can help families rise out of poverty; the extent to which guestworker programs serve as an alternative to unauthorized migration; and if the wages they receive can serve as a deterrence to criminal behavior and participation in illicit economies, such as drug cultivation. Understanding whether and why U.S. immigration policy can have developmental effects abroad will be crucial for reforming existing programs regulating foreign labor as well as for informing policy debates over temporary migration, food security, and poverty alleviation. This research focuses on the H-2A program, which issues visas to temporary or seasonal agricultural laborers for work on U.S. farms for a maximum of one year Through a randomized controlled trial (RCT), this project will manipulate the immigration status of would-be guestworkers in order to understand how access to temporary work abroad alters economic, sociological, and ideological outcomes by comparing differences across “treatment” and “control” groups. For this project, the treatment group will comprise of those who received a guest visa and the control group will comprise of those who did not. The investigators will measure outcomes at the individual and household levels, and will collect metrics relating to human development, victimization, illegal behaviors, as well as political, civic, and social attitudes, Using remote high-frequency survey tools, the investigators will also collect data at all stages of migrants’ journeys from to the U.S. and then back home; this will allow investigators to measure guestworkers’ final locations, independent of whether they leave their home locations. The investigators will also seek to directly quantify the substitution between authorized and unauthorized forms of migration by tracking the location of persons in their control group who did not receive a guestworker visa. Findings from this research will help inform domestic policy-making on immigration policy and contribute to ongoing conversations about H-2A program reform, which has long operated in the absence of rigorous impact evaluations. We also seek to contribute to conversations over international and domestic policies aimed at ensuring food security and alleviating poverty.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.