White South African farmers are thriving in Mississippi

White south africans started working on farms in Mississippi more than two decades ago, if Andrew Johnson (pictured) remembers correctly. At Pitts Farm, where the sexagenarian farm worker was formerly employed, records show that clipped accents became a mainstay in 2014. The South Africans were good guys, hard-working and kept to themselves. The fact that they were getting paid 60% more wasn’t their fault, Mr Johnson says. “They didn’t know what we was getting, we didn’t know what they was getting.”

Each year, several thousand South Africans come to America on seasonal h-2a visas as temporary agricultural workers. The visa was first introduced in 1986. Employers must pay for flight tickets, housing and food, and dish out a premium hourly wage. Persistent farm-labour shortages across America have pushed visas up by 211% from 2011 to the 2021 fiscal year. South African hires, leaving behind a poor economy and high crime rates, have increased by 692% in that same period, and now make up the second-largest group of h-2a workers—exceeded only by Mexicans.