Photo: Leon Neal / Getty Images
For: EFE Updated 24 Apr 2022, 9: 51 am EDT
The temporary H-2B non-agricultural worker visa program requires comprehensive reform, not expansion, in order to prevent “unscrupulous employers” from exploiting these foreigners, Democratic legislators who have presented bills in this regard and union spokespersons affirmed this Friday.
President Joe Biden, faced with a shortage of hand of work, announced three weeks ago that it will add 35,000 H-2B visas between June and September for the so-called “guest workers”.
“Last year the United States registered the figure unprecedented of 500,000 workers in the H-2B visa program,” Rep. Joaquín Castro, a Democrat from Texas, said in a teleconference.
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“Guest workers play an essential role in our economy”, he stressed.
“But the federal government remains unmoved while unscrupulous employers take advantage, allowing abuses that have made this program a new form of slavery,” he added.
The Democrat urged the federal government to reform the program to protect guest workers.
In January the Departments of Homeland Security and Labor had announced the offer of 20, additional H-2B visas during the first half of the fiscal period 2022.
The new batch announced in March includes 20,500 visas available for workers returning to the United States who have already obtained or an H-2B visa during one of the last three tax periods.
The 11,132 remaining visas, exempt from the return requirement, are reserved for citizens of Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
Rep. Judy Chu, Democrat from California, argued that “ the covid-19 pandemic demonstrated how much the United States depends on the harvest workers. In California, millions of these workers harvest the food that reaches our tables.”
“There are employers who misuse the H-2B program to discriminate and exploit workers, both American and foreign,” he added.
“The much-needed reform of the H-2B program includes a path to citizenship for workers and their families, and must protect workers from retaliation, and their right to organize for collective bargaining,” he added.
Castro and Chu have presented in Congress bills for the reform of the H-2B program on which, according to the American trade union center AFL-CIO, is “an abusive model that degrades labor standards and restricts the rights of workers.”
Leonard Aguilar, secretary and treasurer in Texas of the American trade union center AFL-CIO, said that and “the stories of exploitation of workers in this program are heartbreaking.”
“The H-2B program does not work for workers, it needs reform not expansion,” he added. “Workers deserve protection and rights. The unions cannot accept this unfair situation”.