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History has shown us
that
foreign guestworkers who hold restricted status in the U.S. are
vulnerable to workplace abuses. Even when Congress and federal
agencies have sought to impose substantial labor law requirements on
employers of guestworkers, the protections have often been
meaningless because the workers are unable to enforce the law or are
unwilling to attempt to enforce the law for fear of losing their job
or not being called back in a future year. The political
powerlessness of the temporary foreign workers in comparison to
their employers often results in the U.S. government’s neglect of
the promised labor protections and the foreign government’s
reluctance to lose the jobs to another needy nation.
The history of
foreign contract labor in the United States
raises fundamental questions about this nation’s commitment to
providing people within its borders the economic and democratic
freedoms that we have come to expect. That history also raises
significant issues about the labor protections that workers need,
particularly when they are subjected to very restricted statuses,
and the likelihood that those labor protections will be enforced.
There are
currently two guestworker programs for temporary work lasting less
than a year: the H-2A program, for temporary agricultural work, and
the H-2B program, for temporary nonagricultural work. These
programs allow employers to obtain permission to hire foreign
workers on temporary visas after engaging in recruitment in the U.S.
and promising to meet certain requirements regarding recruitment,
wages and/or working conditions. Each program imposes on foreign
workers a temporary, non-immigrant status that ties workers to
particular employers and makes their ability to obtain a visa
dependent on the willingness of the employer to make a request to
the U.S. government.
For more information
about guestworker programs, please visit the following:
Bruce
Goldstein, Executive Director of Farmworker Justice testified about guestworker programs before the House Judiciary Committee's
Subcommittee on Immigration on May 24, 2007. The Hearing on
"Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Labor Movement Perspectives"
included testimony from Jon Hiatt, General Counsel of the AFL-CIO,
Fred Feinstein on behalf of UNITE HERE and Service Employees
International Union, and Michael J. Wilson, Vice President of the
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Bruce
delivered the testimony of Marcos Camacho, General Counsel of the
United Farm Workers, and a Board of Directors member of Farmworker
Justice (because Mr. Camacho's was prevented from boarding an
overbooked flight to Washington, D.C.).
A video of the testimony is
available here.
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