Update below
The Southern Poverty Law Center has just released a report titled, Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States.
Federal and federal/private programs have tried since at least the infamous Bracero Programs of the WW II years, to get something for nothing — dirt cheap labor that would magically disappear when the need was over.
The uproar in recent months over immigration and how to control it has put these labor-supply programs back under the spotlight. Except for the howling fantasists who want the borders sealed and those “who don’t belong” sucked out of their homes and places of work and sent back in sealed box cars, the brewing fight is how to get the workers here that are needed to sustain the US economy, with some modicum of fairness and justice.
As the SPLC report points out, the existing programs may have provided the bodies — though not enough — but have failed abysmally at protecting elementary American values
The H-2 program is… Well, let SPLC tell you about it, here (Close to Slavery ) or for a full pdf version, here.
Don’t miss the last few pages of the report: Recommendations.
# Guestworkers should be able to obtain visas that do not tie them to a specific employer. The current restriction denies guestworkers the most fundamental protection of a free labor market and is at the heart of many abuses they face.
# Congress should provide a process allowing guestworkers to gain permanent residency, with their families, over time. Large-scale, long-term guestworker programs that treat workers as short-term commodities are inconsistent with our society’s core values of democracy and fairness.
# Employers should be required to bear all the costs of recruiting and transporting guestworkers to this country…
And that’s just for starters. See all recommendations, here.
Like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a part of the backbone of our defense against the bad old days reappearing in tomorrow’s clothes. They are always high on my personal list of who gets my fightin’ money.
Update: It’s hard to tell from this Neela Banerjee story but there may be good news in this story about a coalition of evangelical Christians weighing in on immigration policy. She doesn’t give us any specifics but if the Menonites are part of it, and Jim Wallis, it seems likely the compassion side is greater than the punishment side.