The Global Worker Alliance has on its webite some important facts about these programs. H-2A is for agricultural workers.H-2B is for forestry, landscaping and construction.
These are not to be confused with the H-1A program which brings over engineers and computer sciences, from which Intel and Microsoft and their like benefit. I have posted on all of these program before.
Go here for the Global Worker Alliance posting which includes source of data citations.
What the Global Worker Alliance reports:
The United States admits temporary (less than one year) foreign guestworkers through its H-2 program. H-2 visas workers are considered non-professional workers. H-2A visas are issued for seasonal agricultural workers. H-2B visas are issued for temporary non-agricultural workers. Industries that often use H-2B workers are forestry, construction, and landscaping.
H-2R visas are issued to persons who had been issued an H-2B visa within any of the previous three fiscal years. The H-2B and H-2R issuance totals for each nationality when added together produce the totals of H-2B temporary worker visas issued.
Top Ten Countries of Origin for H-2A workers – 2006
Total H-2A Visas Issued 37,149
1. Mexico 34,195 [92% of total]
2. South Africa 1,054
3. Peru 841
4. Nicaragua 146
5. Guatemala 110
6. Australia 87
7. Romania 87
8. New Zealand 84
9. Haiti 78
10. Chile 64
Top Ten Countries of Origin for H-2B workers – 2006
Total H-2B Visas Issued 71,687
1. Mexico 43,269 [60% of total]
2. Jamaica 4,727
3. Romania 2,752
4. Guatemala 2,605
5. South Africa 1,855
6. Philippines 1,590
7. Great Britain 1,504
8. Brazil 1,474
9. Bulgaria 1,108
10. Dominican Republic 853
Top Ten Countries of Origin for H-2R workers – 2006
Total H-2R Visas Issued 50,854
1. Mexico 36,723 [[72% of total]
2. Jamaica 8,402
3. Guatemala 2,356
4. Dominican Republic 490
5. Costa Rica 409
6. Romania 329
7. Honduras 328
8. New Zealand 305
9. Bulgaria 237
10. Australia 231
Category: U.S. working visa programs
Digging into abuses of H-2A and H-2B temporary worker programs in U.S.
The Global Worker Alliance, about which I have posted in the past, is evolving into the leading advocate of temporary worker rights, especially for H-2A (agriculture) and H-2B (forestry, landscaping, etc.) workers. I have placed below its March 2007 report on a visit to Guatemala. The Aliiance is now training workers before they come, and documenting abuses of recruiters.
Reducing Guest Worker Exploitation in Guatemala
Global Workers has been persistently encouraging the United States Embassy in Guatemala and the Guatemalan Labor Ministry to take steps to reduce the rampant exploitation of the Guatemalan people who work in the US guest worker program. On a recent trip to Guatemala, both entities pledged to take major steps forward.
Global Workers met with the US Ambassador and the US Consul General in Guatemala and secured a commitment to change the practice of not informing guest workers about their rights or where to seek assistance. Soon the embassy should be providing the workers with a know-your rights hand out that Global Workers and Southern Poverty Law Center jointly crafted.
The Guatemalan labor ministry has invited Global Workers to provide a training on the US guest worker program. Building on the training, the ministry is pledging to crack down on the abuses by Guatemalan contractors. One such example is the procurement of false loans. Contractors force workers to sign contracts stating they have received loans, when in fact they have not. The contract is a form of bondage to guarantee the worker’s return.
Recruiter abuses in H-2A agriculture guest worker program
“Low Pay and Broken Promises Greet Guest Workers” in the New York Times reports abuses on the United States guest worker program for agricultural workers, the H-2A program. I have posted on H-2A workers before, and also on a special H-2B forestry workers program. The articles focuses on recruitment abuses. “The guest worker program is not for contractors who feel they might be able to find work for other people,” said Mary Bauer, director of the Immigrant Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “It’s for people who have a compelling need to bring in workers from abroad. There’s an enormous incentive for contractors to bring in as many people as possible, even when there isn’t enough work, because they often make money from recruitment fees.”
The article says, “Each year 120,000 foreign workers receive visas to do farm work or other low-skilled labor, usually for three to nine months. These programs grew out of the World War II bracero program, in which hundreds of thousands of Mexicans worked on farms and railroads, often in deplorable conditions.”
Labor experts say employers abuse guest workers far more than other workers because employers know they can ship them home the moment they complain. They also know these workers cannot seek other jobs if they are unhappy.
“I’d say a substantial majority of U.S. guest workers experience some abuses with their paycheck,” said David Griffith, a professor in the anthropology department at East Carolina University and author of the new book “American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market.” “It’s the recruitment process especially where they get cheated.”
The abuses take many forms. Guest workers often pay exorbitant fees and are frequently given fewer weeks of work and lower wages than promised. Many employers fail to make good on their commitment to pay transportation costs. The Thai workers, who were supposed to be paid $16,000 a year for three years, ended up earning a total of just $1,400 to $2,400. Most of the Thai workers had their passports taken away after they arrived, leaving them trapped.
“The program has been rife with abuses, even during the best of times,” said Cindy Hahamovitch, a history professor at the College of William and Mary, who is writing a book about guest workers. “There will never be enough inspectors to check every labor camp, contract and field.”
The article in full:
Continue reading Recruiter abuses in H-2A agriculture guest worker program
Wealth of statistics on illegal immigrants in the U.S.
This is a quick guide to postings I have made in the past. These and other postings are listed in the right hand column segment called “popular posts.” You will find even more information if you go to the hyperlinks in each of these postings.
Go here to find estimates of the number of illegal workers by state and their share of the state’s workforce. Data drawn in part from the Pew Hispanic Center.
Go here to find federal government estimates of illegal immigrants, by country of origin and by when they arrived in the U.S.
Go here to find recent research findings on the impact of all immigrant as well as illegal immigrant labor on native born American wages.
And here for types of work performed by illegal immigrants and other data on these workers, from the Pew Hispanic Center.
AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department’s statement on immigration reform.
Here is the statement, thanks to Jim Platner. I will summarize:
“Mass unregulated illegal immigration into the United States creates unfair wage competition.” There needs to be tougher border enforcement. “A mandatory electronic work-eligibility verification system is needed, which can effectively detect the use of fraudulent documents and significantly reduce the employment of unauthorized immigrants.” This system is “the lynchpin” to comprehensive immigration reform.
A new temporary worker program “would be particularly harmful to the long-term interests of the building and construction industry, because of its negative effect on bona fide apprenticeship and training programs.”
Union sponsored hiring halls and joint labor/management training programs work, and should be supported as the means to provide qualified labor to this industry.
The H-2B visa system in place should be used for foreign labor. This visa program “is currently available to full employers’ temporary needs resulting from either on-time, seasonal, peak load or intermittent labor shortages that do not last for more than one year…it is uniquely appropriate” to fill employer needs in building and construction that cannot otherwise be met be hiring halls.
The H-2B system should be modified to allow for joint labor-management programs to sponsor temporary employment of “trained skilled workers from abroad.” This will assure protection of labor standards of U.S. workers.
There should be a “path to earned legal status” for illegal immigrants here now, as many have been “law-abiding, tax-paying and hard working” participants in the economy. They should pay an appropriate penalty and get in line behind those legally in line from the start. [The term “citizenship” is not used.] Once they “adjust their status”, they should receive federal labor and civil rights protections but not receive federal entitlements.
Skilled foreign workers – summary statistics
Now waves of immigrants are mostly not skilled workers. But foreign born workers have a huge share of some skilled job categories.
Thanks to Immigrant Voice for bringing to my attention these figures.
Skilled workers are a small minority of U.S. legal immigrants. Of the 940,000 legal immigrants recorded in 2004, only 16% were skilled employment-based immigrants. This means that 150,000 of the almost one million new legal immigrants (permanent or temporary) came on a skilled based authorization. About 40% of these skilled immigrants had advanced degrees, or 5 or more years of experience after a baccalaureate degree.
Per Immigrant Voice, the impact of these workers’ contributions to American competitiveness belies their small number, because they make up a large share of all workers in certain professions.
In 1996 17% of all scientists and engineers were foreign born. That rose to 24% in 2002. Among scientists and engineers with PhDs or professional degrees, 38% were foreign born in 1996 and 43% in 2002.
Go to Chpter 2, page 57 of the 2006 Economic Report of the President for more information.
Essential Worker Immigration Coalition: Reform platform
This lobbying group / business association is gearing up for immigration reform this year. It wants more immigrant workers, the more legal the better.
Here is its platform for reform:
Reform should be comprehensive: addressing both future economic needs for future workers and undocumented workers already in the United States.
Reform should strengthen national security by providing for the screening of foreign workers and creating a disincentive for illegal immigration.
Reform should strengthen the rule of law by establishing clear, sensible immigration laws that are efficiently and vigorously enforced.
Reform should create an immigration system that functions efficiently for employers, workers, and government agencies.
Reform should create a program that allows hard working, tax paying undocumented workers to earn legal status.
Reform should ensure that U.S. workers are not displaced by foreign workers.
Reform should ensure that all workers enjoy the same labor law protections.
The policy platform goes on….
Continue reading Essential Worker Immigration Coalition: Reform platform
H-IB visa quota for this year may be exhausted in first 15 days
These are the visas that are typically used by engineers to come to the U.S, and work for the likes of Intel or Microsoft. Back in 2004, the annual quota for new H1B visas was 195,000, then it dropped to 65,000. The Senate’s immigration reform bill S. 2611 would boost it back to 115,000, then rise annually according to a “market” based factor. And – many persons with advanced degrees would be exempt from the cap. See my prior postings on H1B.
The Times of India (TOI) reports that when the next annual period begins on April 1, the entire lot of 65,000 visas may be claimed within a few weeks:
The rush for H-1B visas this year could be like never before. Two years ago, the H-1B quota finished on August 9, 2005. Last year it finished on May 25. This year, with the US economy still growing strongly, it is expected that the quota, which opens for filing of applications on April 1, will finish around April 15.
In other words, as Navneet S Chugh, attorney with the Chugh Firm, US, says, “All of the 65,000 visas (which allow skilled foreign workers, including Indians, to go to the US) will evaporate in 15 days.” Chugh’s firm is telling its clients that “it is imperative that we have all our H-1B petitions ready to go and file them special delivery on April 1.”
TOI spoke to several technology firms who said they are busy finalising the names and number of their employees, who would be travelling to US.
“Subidos” or Mexicans working legally in migrant construction work
The Wall Street Journal on 9/18 (payment required) tracked the work migration of a Cantu family men – self-described subidos. These are Mexicans with green cards, who leave their families in Mexico and pick up relatively well paying jobs on a contract to contact basis, crisscrossing the United States.
“Thanks to quirks in the law, they have green cards enabling them to come to the U.S. for work stints. Many, like the Cantús, call themselves ‘subidos’ from the Spanish verb for ‘to rise,’ because they do the grueling jobs of pouring concrete for tall structures such as grain silos for the ethanol plants increasingly rising across the Great Plains. ”
By quickly filling jobs and providing needed skills, such workers are a boon to employers. They rarely put a burden on social services, because they leave their school-age children and elderly relatives at home. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that the Mexicans drive down wages in the industries where they work.
Some guest workers had their status legalized under the Simpson-Rodino Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to 2.7 million undocumented workers. It offered that group, who call themselves ‘Rodinos,’ the chance at green cards that confer permanent-resident status and the right to work. The act was intended to encourage U.S. citizenship, but some preferred the guest-worker way of life, as the Cantús do, earning wages in the U.S. but keeping their families and their living costs in Mexico.
Others acquired work visas through programs that legalized imported farm workers during times of labor shortages. Still others won green cards after being sponsored by a parent who became a naturalized U.S. citizen, or by marrying a U.S. citizen. About 100,000 Mexicans also legally commute short distances across the border for day jobs in the U.S.
Continue reading “Subidos” or Mexicans working legally in migrant construction work
ABCs of Immigration: H-2B (non-agricultural work) Visas
Once again Greg Siskind, immigration lawyer, lays out the basics of a visa program. I have already posted his introduction to the H-2A visa.
He can be contacted at Law Offices of Siskind Susser, P.C., Attorneys at Law; telephone: 800-748-3819, 901-682-6455; e-mail: gsiskind@visalaw.com: http://www.visalaw.com.
The H-2B visa is similar [to the agriculture-related H-2A visa], but is certification for temporary non-agricultural work. In essence, the visa is available when an employer can demonstrate that unemployed Americans are unavailable to fill the temporary position. The process is similar to the labor certification-based green card process except that the Department of Labor’s H-1B certification is not binding and the USCIS can independently decide to approve an H-2B status petition.
Continue reading ABCs of Immigration: H-2B (non-agricultural work) Visas