SPLC: Guestworker program "close to slavery"

[Laughing Mirror]

By GIL KLIEN
Media General News Service
Tuesday, March 13, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Foreign guestworkers brought legally to the United States are enduring conditions "close to slavery," the Southern Poverty Law Center charged Monday.

Workers pay thousands of dollars to corrupt recruiters in their home country to get temporary jobs, said Mary Bauer, an attorney with the center. When they arrive in the United States, the workers are cheated of their pay yet are legally bound to keep working for their employer.
...
President Bush has proposed greatly expanding the guestworker program as a way to stop illegal immigration. Guestworker proposals likely will be part of legislation in the House and Senate.

"I can't believe they want to replicate this on a grand scale," Bauer said.

http://potomacnews.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WPN/MGArticle/WPN_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173350176072&path=

Employers in 2005 "imported" more than 121,000 temporary H-2 guestworkers — 32,000 H-2A workers for agricultural work and 89,000 H-2B workers for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries.

"Guestworkers are usually poor people who are lured here by the promise of decent jobs," Bauer said. "But all too often, their dreams are based on lies, their hopes shattered by the reality of a system that treats them as commodities. They're the disposable workers of the global economy."

Hugo Martin Recinos-Recinos, a former guestworker from Guatemala, borrowed thousands of dollars to pay recruiting fees for a forestry job in the United States. "I had to leave the deed to my home," he said. "When I got to the U.S., I was always underpaid, living in small hotel rooms and working 10-hour days. The debt from my recruitment and travel to the States made the low pay even harder to bear. When I filed a lawsuit about the conditions, my family and I were threatened. The guestworker program was abuse from beginning to end."

The most fundamental problem with the H-2 system is that employers hold all the cards. They decide which workers can come to the United States and which cannot. They decide whether a worker can stay in this country. They usually decide where and under what conditions workers live and how they travel.

http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=247

[Selatius]

1. "They're the disposable workers of the global economy."

The secret to being the elite rich is to get everybody else to make you money. A billionaire is nothing without his workers making him even more money. If they stopped working en masse, the billionaire's empire comes to a grinding halt.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Saw it myself.... not the prettiest thing to behold.....

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/hp/content/moderndayslavery/reports/realcost1209.html
That glass of OJ is squeezing back

Huge hidden costs of cheap labor are borne by welfare agencies, schools, hospitals, police - you.

By Jane Daugherty
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday Dec. 9, 2003

Cheap labor puts fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice on millions of American breakfast tables every morning.

Cheap labor picks the giant crimson Plant City strawberries, glossy bell peppers and juicy melons, not to mention the picture-perfect Indian River grapefruit so popular in Japan and Europe.

But cheap labor also generates significant hidden costs, costs that one national labor expert says are so staggering that an 8-ounce glass of fresh orange juice that retails for 42 cents from the carton really costs Florida taxpayers a whole lot more.

[ClintonTyree]

3. That's exactly what the Republicans want....

the "cheap labor Republicans" want to return to the days of sweatshops and slavery. It fits well with their business plan. It's the reason millions upon millions of American jobs have been sent overseas.

The Republics want to return to the early 19th century, when citizens were firmly under the thumbs of industry and religion was the only opiate they could afford to keep any semblance of hope in their miserable lives alive. Ahhhhhh....those were the days! :sarcasm: