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Abstract
Historically, farm businesses in the United States have relied on low-cost workers from foreign countries, largely illegal aliens who had limited work options. The H-2A guest worker program aimed to address the labor shortages while ensuring benefits to the laborers with AEWR serving as minimum wage and additional fringe benefits. However, the provisions in the guest worker program became inefficient as it became crop farm-centric, and in recent years huge increments in base AEWR had a negative toll on guest workers' hiring decisions. This study employs the use of SUR models to simultaneously explain the determinants of H-2A-certified positions and AEWR. This study provided empirical evidence for crop biases of the H-2A program, while also explaining the reluctance of domestic workers to work in farming. These findings underscore the need to revisit the H-2A program to accommodate livestock farms while neutering the negative effects on different-sized crop farms.