With thousands of foreign workers granted H2-B visas to work legally in the U.S. hospitality and other industries every year, debate over the future of the guestworker program is growing. For instance, employers in resort communities argue they cannot find enough willing local workers to fill available jobs and must resort to contracting foreigners. Opponents of the H2-B system, meanwhile, contend it is depriving U.S. citizens of employment opportunities while creating a sub-class of easily exploitable workers.
Divisions over the H2-B program were evident when a House judiciary subcommittee chaired by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) gathered testimony on Capitol Hill last week. On the pro side of the debate, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) urged Congress to expand the number of H2-B visas in order to meet vital economic demand. AILA President Kathleen Campbell Walker said adding more visas to the pool was a "no brainer."
In a statement, Walker's group said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should approve visa petitions on file for the second half of 2008 in order to fulfill the Congressionally-mandated cap. In a message dubbed "Save Our Summer," the AILA said the restaurant, hotel, landscaping, construction and seafood industries could be among economic sectors damaged by the failure to approve enough H2-B guestworkers. The lawyers’
group also said approving H2-B visas would contribute to assuring legality in the immigrant workforce. Walker praised Congress' review of the H2-B issue.
"The subcommittee is working to connect the dots between valid labor needs and our immigration laws," Walker said.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning, Washington-based think tank, presented a starkly different view of the H2-B program.
Testifying before Lofgren's subcommittee, EPI Vice-President Ross Eisenbrey said his organization's researchers found no evidence of labor shortages in sectors of the economy employing H2-B workers. Despite the absence of economic necessity, the program grew from 10,000 workers in FY 1993 to 130,000 in FY 2007, Eisenbrey said. Besides undermining US workers and their working conditions, Eisenbrey maintained that the guestworker system is creating "dependencies among businesses for docile foreign workers with no voice, no bargaining power and few rights."
Noting that the US is falling into recession and rising unemployment, the EPI called for cutting back or eliminating the H2-B program altogether.
The research organization proposed reforms to include better publicizing of job opportunities for U.S. workers; assuring that prevailing wages remain the industry standard; allowing H2-B guestworkers to join unions and have collective bargaining power, and strengthening the legal language in guestworker contracts. In addition to the H2-B program, Congress is expected to hold other hearings on immigration-related matters in the coming weeks.
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Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico
For a free electronic subscription email fnsnews@nmsu.edu
Dave
April 23, 2008
House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also wants to allow the influx of foreign nationals guest workers. Perhaps her main reason is because she needs swarms of cheap labor that she can exploit on her grape plantations in central California. Wonder whats in it for state Colorado Rep. Kathleen Curry, a Democrat? Rep. Terrance Carroll, a Democrat? Are is also trying to gut the border fence, so millions more uneducated poor can feed at the public welfare trough? As if that was not enough the leading Democrats are have amended President Bushes fence law and underfunded it. Including to re-engineer the plans of Rep.Duncan Hunter (R-CA) for a two-tier fence. Currently we have a damn mess were instead of miles of border barrier, we have towers with inoperative camera, sensing equipment and millions of dollars in wasted taxpayers money. Duncan Hunters border fence in San Diego county, California had a 90% success rate of stopping drugs, white slavery and an illegal aliens easy path into America.
But why are these politicians and farmers opting for an Arizona guest-worker program when the federal government already has on?. It's called the H-2A visa program designed for U.S. companies hiring foreign workers to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature. Why do they want to set-up shop in Mexico? Here there are very few workers laws, safety measures and they can exploit the poor, cheap labor.
However in this nation this program has a number of advantages for employers, most notably the assurance of a legal, documented work force and the reduction of labor turnover with the resulting loss in productivity. No restrictions are made on the number of H-2A workers that are admitted yearly.
So why don't farmers like the program?
Maybe it's because they don't like the H-2A visa requirements intended to protect workers from exploitive working conditions. Or they don't like having to pay the same wages as comparable U.S. workers would have to be paid as determined by the Department of Labor.
Or they don't like having to provide the laborer with an earnings statement detailing the worker's total earnings, the hours of work offered and the hours actually worked. That they don't like having to provide housing to all H-2A workers, which must be inspected by the Department of Labor to assure minimum federal standards.
Or they don't like having to provide transportation to and from the guest worker's temporary home (if it's made available) as well as transportation to the next work place when the contract is fulfilled. Or they don't care want to provide meals or facilities in which the workers can prepare food. Or they don't like having to provide worker's compensation insurance, nor do they have to provide health insurance. The taxpayers provide that as a free-be to pariah employers.
If farmers had to comply with the federally mandated requirements, it would defeat the advantages of hiring cheap illegal immigrant labor in the first place. What farmers really want is to legalize the on-demand hiring of the same cheap labor they have always hired, with the taxpayers footing the bill for workers' benefits like schooling for their young, including free meals under title 1. Free student books and other complimentary hand-outs, including free health care. Not forgetting that low wage earners can apply for food stamps, subsidized housing, baby sitters for their toddlers and many other benefits on the taxpayers dime.
That is why some politicians like Grijalva push for the H-2A visa program? Could it be that they want "temporary" to really be "permanent" — advocating that in return for the "cheap" lettuce produced, temporary workers and their families deserve a path to permanent U.S. citizenship? Is this a way around immigration enforcement, like the federal SAVE ACT now pending in Congress. The simple question is, are the tomatoes, grapes or even lettuce cheaper? No! Not when you realize the massive cost to US taxpayers. Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization, said U.S. taxpayers paid more than $9,000 for each immigrant in the country, a third of whom are believed to be in the U.S. illegally.
In addition, more than 37 million immigrants in the United States, both legal and illegal, cost the federal government more than $346 billion last year, twice as much as the nation's fiscal deficit, according to a report released yesterday. The loss estimates, the report said, included $100 billion in federal taxes lost "from the reduction of native incomes caused by immigrant workers." He also stated that even programs that are not usually associated with immigration, he said, have actually added financial burdens to the taxpayers.
What is certain is that neither the farmers nor the lawmakers are really interested in what is good for America — and the U.S. citizen worker is in this nation. They have become the puppets of the special interest lobby.
We desperately need a federal mandated law such as the SAVE ACT, so we can seal our borders, and fully restrict illegal immigration within the interior of America as well.
WALTER JOSÉ DE FIGUEIREDO
April 25, 2008
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Ken G
April 25, 2008
Finding, recruiting, training and retaining food service workers in El Paso is difficult. Many trained and experienced food service workers in Juarez would be happy to start at minimum wage in El Paso. This would be win-win, not exploitation.