Sabul Vijayan and Daniel Castellanos, two former H-2B guest workers, traveled to Washington this week and told Congressional staff that the lack of safeguards in the program failed to protect them and many of those who worked along side them from unscrupulous employers and labor recruiters.

Vijayan and over 100 other guest workers from India recently filed a federal lawsuit alleging they were the victims of human trafficking at the Signal International shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. These workers have said that they each paid up to $20,000 to a recruiter who made the false promise that the H-2B program included permanent residency.

Castellanos was recruited from his native Peru to work in the U.S. and claims he was promised a good wage to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Once he arrived in New Orleans, however, Castellanos said that the job that was promised to him didn’t exist. Instead, he said he was forced to work in a hotel earning a significantly lower wage for fewer hours a week – well below minimum wage when you consider the thousands of dollars of fees Castellanos owed to the recruiter who brought him to the U.S.

Sabul and Daniel’s experiences with the H-2B guest worker program are only two examples of the many abuses documented over the years by worker advocates. Unfortunately, countless other foreign workers with H-2B work permits are afraid to speak up about their conditions for fear that they will loose their job and be deported.

I have authored legislation that would explicitly ban such fees and regulate the labor recruiters who too often act unscrupulously and make such claims. The bill would also outlaw exorbitant fees paid by workers to recruiters that expose workers to bankruptcy or other financial harm. These fees have trapped many guest workers into a cycle of debt, afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs.

It is clear that additional steps must also be taken to ensure that the H2-B program operates in the best interests of both U.S. and foreign workers. We must insist that the program pay workers the prevailing wage for the type of work they are performing in the locations where they are working, so that employers won’t hire guest workers in order to drive U.S. workers’ wages down.

We must ensure that guest workers have a way to seek justice when they believe they have been wronged. And the U.S. Department of Labor must stop shirking its responsibilities and start enforcing the law.

Finally, at a time when a growing number of American workers are losing their jobs, we should make sure that U.S. workers are recruited first before turning to guest workers.

We must make certain that there are sufficient safeguards in place to protect all workers – both U.S. workers and guest workers – from exploitation. Until we have stronger protections for both U.S. workers and foreign guest workers, we should not increase the size of the guest worker program.

Rep. Miller is chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Politics, Labor .