US Congress has to reform guest worker program of the Immigration Law
By Dr. Marivir Montebon
There is a prevailing air of hate and discrimination against new immigrants in America for quite some time. By new immigrants, I mean, the people who came to the US from the last 20 years or less. There is a preconceived notion that these immigrants have “stolen” the jobs of Americans.
The media has been a great contributor to this lopsided or discriminatory mindset. There is a lack of deeper understanding of the labor migration patterns in the US and its socio-economic and political history, hence this kind of discriminatory attitude prevails.
Is it true that immigrants are freeloaders of the economy, using tax dollars of residents and citizens, despite the fact that they are undocumented? Did they just come here and overstayed their visas to easily live a good life?
My answer is NO.
The US government estimated that there are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US and growing. There can only be two ways to become undocumented: overstaying your visa (i.e., tourist, student, or working visa) or jumping into the US border. These are human acts. But the government’s very own immigration laws have spawned the massive influx of workers, making them vulnerable to human trafficking. Overstayed visas, for example, are only a result of such exploitative schemes.
Let me argue my case:
America’s immigration policies have created the burgeoning number of undocumented persons without any solution in sight, until it has remedied it through policy reform.
The 1986 guest worker program of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 provides recruiters tremendous opportunities to traffic people into labor exploitation in agriculture and non-agriculture environments, under the H2 A and B visa program. The US government issues 66,000 to 135,000 visas every year for guest workers that flood the labor market, making cheap labor highly competitive and disposable.
These H2 A and B visas are for workers in the entertainment industry (hotels, theme parks, resorts, etc.) and large agricultural farms.
This guest worker program is a continuation of the La Bracera program to cover for labor shortages in the post-war era. Its temporary nature makes workers vulnerable to exploitation by recruiters who repeatedly ask them to pay placement fees and employers who pay them poverty wages.
The lifespan of these temporary work visas are only six to eight months. They must be renewed, so that the worker can continue to work legally. Because the quota of these visas is high (maximum 135,000 annually), existing labor is disposable. The cheap labor market gets so competitive, and everyone is disposable, because of too much labor supply.
For example, in Florida, there are so many hotel workers with temporary guest workers visas who wait for jobs during vacation peak seasons. If it is off season, they are out of jobs and have to scamper on getting caregiving jobs or perhaps get into prostitution.
Looking deeper into the Temporary Guest Worker Program:
The temporary guest worker program is the perfect creator of human trafficking. Recruiters in Mexico or the Philippines for instance, lure poor people to come to America for the promise of great jobs, an eventual green card after a contract of three years, and in exchange for a placement or recruitment fee of $3000 to $10,000. After being hugely indebted because of high placement fees, how can a poor, deceived immigrant worker just goes home to her mother country?
Chances are, this poor, deceived immigrant worker will plead her recruiter to place her in another job in a hotel or farm. This becomes another money-making scheme for the recruiter: he asks for another round of placement fee from the poor immigrant worker. The scheme continues for three years that the temporary visa is maxed out, and applied by recruiters to thousands of victims. Unfortunately, without us seeing it, this cycle continues.
Exploitation by recruiters (they are syndicated operators in the US and in sending countries) is pervasive. And big businesses (farms and hotels, for example) benefit from their recruitment schemes for cheap and temporary labor. Businesses get an added benefit of a union-free work force by using temporary guest workers.
The Trump administration is looking at expanding the H2B visa program in order to respond to the cheap labor needs of the non-agricultural sectors which include service, entertainment, and hotel industry. After all, he is a hotel and entertainment mogul! This is the greatest weakness that poses on the issue on human and labor trafficking. The Chief Executive and other business interests that lobby in Congress are using cheap labor themselves.
The International Labor Organization cites that majority of trafficking victims are exploited for their labor, at 68% of the estimated 21 million people living in forced labor and modern-day slavery.
America, due to its high need for massive labor to run its economy on a daily basis, is a top human trafficking destination which covers all of its 50 states. But California, Texas, Florida, and New York are big homes to thousands of nameless workers silently suffering from labor and sex exploitation.
What is to be done?:
There are US congressmen and women who are lobbying for the repeal of the Guest Worker Program, because they have seen that it provides the platform for human and labor trafficking. I believe that communities and organizations must continuously voice out their sentiment against this specific program because it has been exploited by middlemen or traffickers for high recruitment fees and big or small businesses for cheap labor.
The Southern Poverty Law Center recommends to US Congress that the temporary guest worker program must undergo a rethinking. “It is rife with labor and human rights violations committed by employers on prey on the highly vulnerable work force. If guest workers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting, or retaliation. It harms the interest of US workers too by undercutting wages in competition with the cheap alternative, the temporary guest workers.”
There is no other way to solve the mounting number of cheap temporary work visas in the US but to repeal this law. Despite the mandated annual quota of 5000 T visas and 10,000 U visas (also called humanitarian visas) issued by the USCIS for trafficked persons, it will not solve the problem of human trafficking because the immigration law allows of the entrance of a maximum of 106,000 temporary guest workers annually who are vulnerable.
The USCIS staff could not and will never be able to cope with the mounting paper work, for the high visa volumes that the government itself has created.
It is time to take a serious look at the existing work force of the US: both documented and undocumented and harness these human resources. The temporary guest workers program must stop, first and foremost, because there is an apparent oversupply. This issue on human trafficking can be addressed by looking through the lens of social justice and business ethics. Congress must thoroughly examine the immigration and labor policy and come up with thoughtful measures to stop the influx of cheap temporary labor immigrants.
It has to also come up with measures to optimize the people who are already working here and actively contributing to the economic and socio-cultural diversity of the US. Unless the immigration policy is investigated carefully and compassionately, social divide in the US will continue. #
(My Finals Essay for my Ethics and Social Justice under Dr. K. Noda of HJI in 2018. My case was on Social Justice for Migrant Workers and Business Ethics, particularly at managing the burgeoning number of undocumented immigrants in the US. mindful of the inspiration of Aristotle who taught us that “justice consists in what is lawful and far, with fairness
involving equitable distributions and the correction of what is inequitable.”)
References:
1.Werner, Dan. Southern Poverty Law Center. Fighting Modern Day Slavery.
https://www.splcenter.org/20130218/close-slavery-guestworker-programs-united-states
2.Montebon, M. OSM! Justcliqit.com http://justcliqit.com/rethink-the-us-guest-worker-h2-
a-b-program-spawning-ground-for-human-trafficking/
3.Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. www.iep.utm.edu/justwest/
