BOB HERBERT: Indentured Servants in America

[Veronica.Franco]

Indentured Servants in America

By BOB HERBERT

A must-read for anyone who favors an expansion of guest worker programs in the U.S. is a stunning new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center that details the widespread abuse of highly vulnerable, poverty-stricken workers in programs that already exist.

The report is titled “Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States.” It will be formally released today at a press conference in Washington.

Workers recruited from Mexico, South America, Asia and elsewhere to work in American hotels and in such labor-intensive industries as forestry, seafood processing and construction are often ruthlessly exploited.

They are routinely cheated out of their wages, which are low to begin with. They are bound like indentured servants to the middlemen and employers who arrange their work tours in the U.S. And they are virtual hostages of the American companies that employ them.

http://wealthyfrenchman.blogspot.com/2007/03/indentured-servants-in-america.html

[pberq]

1. Kick & Nominated

Legalized slavery

[babylonsister]

2. My gosh. This is tragic; how can it be legal? nt

[Paranoid Pessimist]

5. It's legal because those who make the laws are bought & paid for n/t

[lvx35]

3. But slaves are good for the free market!

Haven't ya heard! Free men are bad for free markets

:sarcasm:

[robinlynne]

4. the guest worker program lobby is paid for Walmart and other huge companies.

it is THE reason bush started talking about immigration, to get the guest worker program in full swing. It would kill our unions and our wages all over the country. k&r.