The Southern Poverty Law Center is pressing federal enforcement agencies and Congress to hold accountable employers who exploit guest workers under the H-2 visa program.
The program brings thousands of low-skilled foreign workers into the United States. In a 48-page study published this month, SPLC focuses on such problems as illegally holding workers' wages and denying them legal protections.
The exploitation these workers are commonly subjected to is comparable to slavery, claims the Alabama-based civil rights organization. It cites violations ranging from not receiving promised wages, being housed in substandard living conditions and being denied medical care to having personal documents such as passports withheld to ensure workers do not leave.
"What we want -all of us who come with H-2B visas - is to have some changes enacted against our employers," said former Guatemalan guest worker Hugo Martin Recinos-Recinos during a news conference in Washington, D.C., which accompanied the report's release this week.
A total of 121,000 H-2 visas were granted in 2005. Of these, 32,000 went to H-2A agricultural workers and 89,000 to H-2B forestry, seafood processing, construction and other non-agricultural workers. Close to 75 percent of all H-2 visa recipients came from Mexico.
The abuses are much more pervasive among H-2B non-agricultural workers, according to the center.
H-2A visas offer safeguards such as enforced wages and work hours, safety regulations and federally funded legal services which are lacking on H-2Bs.
Recinos-Recinos recounts that while he was employed by Arkansas-based Express Forestry from 2000 to 2003, he was paid $25 for every 1,000 trees he planted, as opposed to the hourly wage guaranteed in his contract.
"If the contract states that we will get paid $8 per hour, then companies should fulfill their promise to us," he says.
Boise, Idaho, attorney Maria Andrade relates that based on her experience in handling guest worker cases, the most common problem they encounter is the lack of information about payment and fees concerning transportation, housing, equipment and food,
"In one case, a house rented to guest workers at any one time could have 10 workers or up to 30 workers," she says. "Each worker was charged $80 a month."
The H-2B status excludes workers from receiving federally funded legal services to investigate or prosecute violations by employers.
Andrade points out that it is critical to extend legal services to these workers. Without such protections, she says, the workers don't have a voice. "People can suffer really bad abuses if they feel insecure in their ability to complain. Nobody is going to speak up if they are going to get deported."
One of the main problems of the H-2B visa system is that workers are tied to the employer who sponsors them, said Mary Bauer, director of SPLC's Immigrant Justice Project. Many workers accumulate thousands in financial debt just to come work in the United States. The report states many workers are charged $3,500 to $5,000.
The U.S. Department of Labor says violations can be reported to any office of the Wage and Hour Division.
But, claims Andrade, "Sometimes they choose to enforce it, and sometimes they don't."
The report is based on thousands of interviews with guest workers and reviews of legal cases.
For copies of the full report, call 334/956-8200 or find it online at www.splcenter.org.
Author Tracie Morales is a reporter with Hispanic Link in Washington, D.C. Reach her in care of editor@hispaniclink.org.