H2A Visa Timeline: How Long Does It Take to Get an H2A Visa?
“How long will it take to get my H2A visa?”
We get this question a lot. Many factors affect the H2A visa timeline, and several steps are involved in obtaining your work visa. However, when the process is running smoothly, you can expect a predictable timeline. At the end of the day, you aren’t navigating the process alone, and many times, the timeline is out of your hands.
General H2A visa timeline
In a perfect world, you can expect 2-4 months from the time you interview to when you receive your H2A visa. The amount of time it takes to get your H2A visa varies depending on several factors, including:
Amount of time to receive a job offer - this can take years.
Consulate backlogs and waiting time
Visa petitioning time and requests for evidence.
These are all factors in the time it takes to get your H2A visa. Some candidates wait years and still never receive an interview, let alone a job offer. There are only so many American farms and ag operations, so competition is stiff for these skilled H2A jobs.
Once you have your job offer in place, you can expect 2-4 months before you have your H-2A visa.
Steps to getting your H2A visa
It’s important to remember that much of this process is out of your control. You can’t get an H2A visa unless an American farmer has a Temporary Labor Certification that ties you to their operation. Still, here are the steps to getting an H2A visa that you can control:
Recruitment profile: You contact a recruiter, submit your resume/CV, and create a profile that will be presented to American ag employers looking for seasonal farmworkers through H2A.
Job interview: Your recruiter will offer your resume/CV to potential American ag employers to see if they’d like to arrange an interview. Although your recruiter can push your resume/CV, the decision to interview you is solely that of an American ag employer.
Accepting a job offer: If an ag employer is impressed with your interview, skills, and experience, they will make you an official job offer.
Consulate appointment and interview: Once you have a Certified ag employer make a job offer, you will need to schedule your consulate appointment and consulate interview, where the U.S. government will vet your background to ensure you’re not a risk to go over to America.
Many South Africans looking for farm jobs in America make it to the recruitment profile phase of getting an H2A visa and nothing more. There are a few reasons for this:
Recruiters receive hundreds and thousands of CVs and resumes.
Many American ag employers bring back the same workers year after year, making open jobs even scarcer.
If your skills and experience don’t stand out immediately to a recruiter, they aren’t going to push your CV or resume to potential employers.
Despite the strong competition for seasonal positions, American farmers love hiring South Africans for skilled farm jobs, such as operating equipment and driving farm trucks. As a result, job opportunities are even more limited. Some of the biggest farms in America only require 3-4 skilled equipment operators. If those employers bring the same workers back each season, the number of “open” job opportunities dramatically decreases.
What speeds up the H2A visa process? What slows it down?
Since most of your H2A visa process is out of your control, there isn’t much you can personally do to speed the process up. However, some best practices will put you in a position to get an H2A visa as soon as possible, such as:
Accurate, descriptive CV/resume designed to stand out to employers by showcasing your skills and experience.
Having your identification, citizenship, and other documents up to date and ready for your consulate appointment.
Possessing valid travel documents and a passport ahead of your consulate appointment.
How USA Truck Labor helps speed up the process
Coming to USA Truck Labor ahead of time for training and verification won’t speed up the H2A visa timeline, but it will equip you with the skills and experience so you’re not waiting as long to be noticed. Our partnership with USA Farm Labor helps you get noticed faster, essentially speeding up the process. Our candidates receive a top profile in the USA Farm Labor database, meaning your profile is displayed ahead of other candidates. While this doesn’t naturally speed up the visa process, it gets your profile in front of employers who need skilled workers. Your profile comes with icons signaling that you have gone through training and verification. The faster you have a job offer, the quicker you will receive your H2A work visa.
Working with the team at USA Truck Labor will prepare you for the process once it begins. Our team helps set your expectations so that you know what the future holds as you attempt to get an H2A job. When you know what to expect and are prepared, you’ll experience fewer delays.
Come for training, stay prepared, be patient
Training and verification help set your profile apart from thousands of others by prepping you with verified skills that American employers are looking for in their H2A workers. Your profile displays special icons showing that you have passed our training course and verified your skills. Keep your travel and citizenship documents up to date and ready to go in the event you receive an interview and a job offer. Staying prepared is the best thing you can do for yourself.
