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Expanding Guest Worker Program Would Hurt U.S. Workers |
With 7 million U.S. workers unemployed, why do employers clamor that they need to import foreign workers to work in low-wage jobs as dishwashers, hotel maids, crab pickers and landscape laborers? The answer is simple, according to Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI):
There isn’t a shortage of workers willing to do these jobs. There’s a shortage of employers willing to pay a decent wage.
In a recent op-ed column in Newsday, Eisenbrey points out that at a time when hundreds of thousands of families are facing foreclosures on their homes and wages are stagnant, corporate interests and their allies in Congress on both sides of the aisle are pushing to expand the number of foreign guest workers.
That would be bad news for low-wage workers in this country, whether immigrant or native-born, Eisenbrey says, because it would bring in more workers willing to accept low wages and less likely to join unions or otherwise seek to fulfill their workplace rights.
Current law caps the number of guest workers allowed to enter the country each year at 66,000 under the H-2B visa program, if employers fail to find qualified U.S. workers. But the law is rigged, Eisenbrey says. For example, employers only are required to advertise for workers for four months before the jobs become vacant. In the past 10 years, the number of H-2B visas have grown from 20,000 to 130,000. If Congress lifts the cap and allows all the foreign workers who used H-2B visas in the past three years to re-enter, potentially more than 200,000 visas could be issues. Employers want to bring in more guest workers to keep wages low, he says, because almost all H-2B employers pay less than a living wage. Eisenbrey says EPI
examined wages and unemployment in the seven occupations with the most H-2B workers, which include hotel and restaurant workers. In these occupations, unemployment was higher and had risen faster since 2000 than the national average, while wages were lower and had risen more slowly than the national average.
Click here to read the entire column.
The AFL-CIO backs strong protections for immigrant workers’ freedoms and rights and opposes expansion of current guest worker programs. Last June, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told a Capitol Hill press conference that Congress should place workers’ rights at the forefront of any immigration reform plan and pass a broad legalization program, free of new temporary guest worker programs. Said Trumka:
The current system is unworkable. It has become a blueprint for exploitation of all workers, both U.S. and foreign-born. As long as this broken system persists, all workers will suffer because employers will be able to turn to a ready pool of exploitable workers to drive down wages, benefits, health and safety protections and other workplace standards for all workers.
Guest workers are easily exploited, Trumka says, because they typically are deeply in debt by the time they arrive in the United States, where the companies that hire them often charge additional fees for boarding, food and expenses. The workers say the recruiters and the employer threaten, coerce and defraude them into paying additional money and altered contracts, which they force the workers to accept under threat of losing their passports and visas. A study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States, relates that it is not unusual for guest workers to pay huge fees to obtain a seasonal guest worker position.
Just last month, more than 70 Indian guest workers rallied at the White House gates to demand fundamental changes in the nation’s guest worker program. They also demanded a congressional investigation of their former employer, Signal International, a marine construction company they say held them in modern-day forced labor in its Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard.
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I have been following this for a while, one of my articles I highlight a video, well the caption speaks for itself
From the article: Offshoring and H1B Visa abuse, the 1-2 punch to knockout US tech workers
and i have recently added More H1b Visa abuse news: DOJ penalizes company for excluding US workers in favor of H1b Visa holders
Many of us,have been trying to tell many of you, that we don’t need more, or any guest worker programs. The whole thing is slanted against american citizens.Punish the employers for this crap and shut down the programs we will all be better off, us and illegal aliens.
Boy! With a government working against its own citizens like this…
who needs enemies. Half the time I wonder which foreign country they represent because it’s certainly not us!
Dr
Last week I asked 9 or 10 Anglos the following question:
If you could earn $20 per hour and get medical insurance, but had to uproot your family and travel to Texas for 60 days, then a three months in Southern California, then on to Oregon for 45 days, and finally up to Washington for two months to follow your work, would you?
There were no takers! None!
And that’s pretty close to the number of native-born US residents who are willing to do migrant labor.
It’s time to trade in your bias and prejudice in exchange for facts and reality.
What is that you say? “Oh, ok…leave those lousy, stoop-labor jobs to immigrants, but we whites deserve the good ones?”
You’ve been listening to Hillary Clinton too much.
Workers are not our enemies. Our enemies are two-bit politicians like McCain and the Clintons, all of whom shoved NAFTA down our throats
Right On Rich! My grandfather worked construction, mining, and the railroad after coming here from Mexico! He was never invited to join a union here, but knowing him as I did he would have gladly signed up!
The point I am trying to make is that WE all need to work! However all of us need jobs that pay adequate wages, with benefits and protection from abuse by the bosses!
The sooner we learn to unite and work together with the same goals, the sooner the bosses will once respect organized labor!
Rich what to you think I do for a living?I’m a constuction worker I’ve been all over this country and some others in the last forty years making a living and supporting my family and Illegal Immigration has not helped me do it.I’ve been SCABBED on in many states.Also ChicanoWobbly no one will ask you to join a Union you need to seek it out.
It’s what we’ve been saying all along. It’s not about jobs ‘Americans won’t do’. It’s about businesses that WON’T PAY! Even Bill Gates, who is now the THIRD richest man in the world rather than the first, is getting in on the action. Our elected officials practically kissed his feet when he sat before them pleading his case for an increase in the number of H-1B visas. Of course I CAN see his point. If he can spend a little less on ‘labor’ maybe he can climb back up to the top of the ladder. He doesn’t like being number three. Poor baby! And to think, I used to view him as one of the good guys. I guess there’s no limit on just how far can greed go. Geez!