As the H-2A visa program expands to become a core component of contemporary Mexican migration to the United States, questions emerge about the tradeoffs migrants face between temporary and undocumented statuses. This article employs propensity score matching of participants in the Mexican Migration Project—an extensive binational survey of Mexican migrants and their families—to compare economic and social outcomes of H-2A visa recipients vis-à-vis undocumented migrants. Findings indicate that although H-2A visas offer benefits like a lower cost of living while abroad, they do not produce a discernible effect on wages relative to wages earned by undocumented migrants. While H-2A migrants are more likely to work in the formal economy, they are also less likely to build social capital or language proficiency in the United States than undocumented migrants, indicating a degree of social isolation that can be exploited by employers. This comparison contributes to a growing literature on the proliferation of temporary migratory statuses and the marginality experienced by migrants within these statuses.

随着 H-2A 签证计划扩展到成为当代墨西哥移民到美国的核心组成部分，关于移民在临时身份和无证身份之间所面临的权衡问题出现了。本文采用墨西哥移民项目参与者的倾向得分匹配（一项针对墨西哥移民及其家庭的广泛双边调查）来比较 H-2A 签证接受者与无证移民的经济和社会成果。调查结果表明，尽管 H-2A 签证提供了一些好处，例如在国外生活成本较低，但与无证移民的工资相比，它们对工资没有明显的影响。虽然 H-2A 移民更有可能在正规经济中工作，与无证移民相比，他们在美国建立社会资本或语言能力的可能性也较小，这表明雇主可以利用一定程度的社会孤立。这种比较促成了越来越多的关于临时移民身份的扩散以及移民在这些身份中所经历的边缘化的文献。