H-2A Truck Drivers Face the Same English-Proficiency Bar as Everyone Else, DOL Reminds Employers

The U.S. Department of Labor has reinforced that foreign workers certified to operate commercial motor vehicles under the H-2A seasonal agricultural visa program are held to the same federal English-language proficiency standard as any other CMV driver — no carve-out for the agricultural visa category. The guidance, issued as DOL release 26-735-NAT on May 14, 2026, states that "all job orders and applications for temporary or permanent labor certification for positions which would require foreign workers to operate a commercial motor vehicle must include an English language proficiency standard that is consistent with established federal requirements," with the underlying standard requiring drivers to "read and speak English sufficiently to understand traffic signs, communicate with the general public, respond to official inquiries, and make entries in reports and other records." The requirement took effect 30 days after publication and applies prospectively to new filings; employers who don't comply receive a Notice of Deficiency and their certification is paused until it's corrected.

The reminder matters because of scale. Between Oct. 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, DOL's Office of Foreign Labor Certification certified roughly 470 H-2A applications covering about 3,320 jobs in the broad Transportation and Material Moving Occupations category, according to FreightWaves' analysis of DOL's public certification disclosure data. Of those, FreightWaves identified 2,609 positions specifically classified as heavy-and-tractor-trailer or light-truck driver roles. Texas led with 515 certified H-2A truck-driver jobs, followed by Louisiana with 448, New Mexico with 272, Iowa with 140, Arizona with 112 and California with 111 — a distribution that tracks closely with H-2A agricultural labor demand generally, concentrated in border states and Gulf Coast farm regions.

Where this fits the broader enforcement push

The reminder arrives roughly three and a half months after the underlying guidance was issued, and one day after the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the emergency removal of more than 110 driver-training providers from FMCSA's Training Provider Registry over English-proficiency violations — a separate but related enforcement track that targets training schools rather than labor-certification filings. Where the DOT/FMCSA action polices who trains drivers, the DOL guidance polices who gets certified to bring foreign drivers into the country in the first place. Together they close off compliance gaps at both the training and the visa-certification stages of the pipeline.

Forwarder angle

Harvest-season disruption risk is concentrated, not diffuse. With 515 certified positions in Texas and 448 in Louisiana, agricultural shippers and the brokers who move their freight in those two states carry the most exposure if drivers are pulled from service mid-harvest for failing a roadside English assessment. A shipper relying on H-2A-certified drivers for produce or grain movement in either state should confirm with their carrier that drivers have been assessed against the federal standard before harvest peaks, not after a roadside stop forces the issue.

The Notice of Deficiency mechanism is a filing-stage checkpoint, not a roadside one. Employers who don't build English-proficiency language into their labor certification applications get flagged before a driver is even hired — which means the compliance failure this guidance targets happens earlier in the process than the roadside inspections that shut down the 110 training schools. Carriers using H-2A drivers should treat their labor-certification paperwork, not just driver testing, as a compliance checkpoint.