“Close to Slavery”: Guest workers programs
I just stumbled across a 2007 study on guest worker programs, Close to Slavery, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As the SPLC says, “This report details the systematic exploitation of foreign workers who come to this country for temporary jobs under the nation’s H-2 guestworker program. Based on dozens of legal cases and interviews with thousands of guestworkers, it documents how guestworkers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs, and held virtually captive by employers.”