Does America really need MORE foreign workers?

H-2 visa programs are rife with fraud and abuse

Dear John,

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When even migrants' rights groups are pointing out the horrible abuses of the H-2 visa programs, it seems insane to expand them. Does Congress even care about the abuses? Do your elected officials?

H-2 visas allow foreign workers to come to compete with Americans for American jobs. Supposedly, these are temporary jobs Americans won't do. But Southern Migrant Legal Services and the Mississippi Center for Justice contacted the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate corporate-owned farms for importing workers as if they were commodities instead of hiring American workers. Turns out that, for decent wages, there were plenty of people seeking those jobs.

Centro De Los Derechos Del Migrante (Center for Migrant Rights), a Mexican-based organization finds "the H-2A program is not a 'win-win' program. In its current form, it is fatally flawed, too often a vehicle for abuse, exploitation, and trafficking." No wonder. The abuses the H2 programs are intended to avoid are going unchecked. Many live in housing that would never be permitted for anyone else but migrant workers. 100% reported abuse, according to a survey by Latino USA and Futura Investigates.

Like illegal immigration, these unchecked abuses help make using H-2 visas cheaper than employing American workers. Ending the abuses would also help American labor be more competitive.

A Biden-administration labor official, Mike Rios, described H-2A as "the purchase of humans to perform difficult work under terrible conditions, sometimes including subhuman living conditions." While even some Republicans in Congress expressed outrage that Rios compared conditions to slavery, the H-2A program as it is involves illegal but common forced labor, squalor, and yes, indenture. As Rios correctly noted, migrant laborers often experience wage theft and end up unreimbursed for their travel, deep in debt, and unable to leave their jobs no matter how shocking the conditions are.

America can do better. We may not agree with the proposed "solutions" of some of these migrants'-rights groups, but we should all agree that America can do far better. We must.

The H-2 visa programs must be reformed, not expanded. The last thing we need is to have MORE visas, let alone more visas that increase these abusive conditions.

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I'd hate for anyone to mix up H.R. 2 with H-2 visas because of their similar names. H.R. 2 is the best border security legislation that has gone to the House floor in the history of NumbersUSA. It would go a long way to solving the border crisis and making sure businesses hire American workers, instead of illegal aliens. We're disappointed but not surprised that Congress did not include H.R. 2 in the must-pass debt ceiling bill; we're going to keep on pushing hard.

The H-2 visa program allows employers to recruit temporary migrant workers! Many of these workers end up paying their own way here, then find their wages are lower than promised, they aren't reimbursed for their travel, and they end up in debt, becoming modern-day indentured servants. Not only do many not return to their home countries, many can't go back.

Due to birthright citizenship, another immigration policy we at NumbersUSA are working to change, the children of migrant workers born in the United States are granted U.S. citizenship and all children with the migrant workers are given access to taxpayer-funded benefits like welfare and healthcare. The cycle then repeats into the next generation where they grow up to take still more jobs. All the while the US citizens who are low-skilled workers go without jobs and become dependent on their state and the federal governments.

Is it any wonder why civil-rights leaders from Frederick Douglas to Cesar Chavez to Barbara Jordan opposed such imported labor... and why so many organizations now are at least demanding huge reforms?

NumbersUSA has been highlighting the connection between unhelpful immigration and the harmful effect on American workers since our founding, with books such as Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth by Roy Beck, 2021; Political Migrants: Hispanic Voters on the Move—How America's Largest Minority Is Flipping Conventional Wisdom on Its Head by Jim Robb, 2022; and the classic, The Case Against Immigration: The Moral, Economic, Social, and Environmental Reasons for Reducing U.S. Immigration Back to Traditional Levels by Roy Beck, 1996; For a fast read specifically about H-2 workers, check out this week's blog by Jeremy Beck.

But don't forget to come back and donate to our cause!

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Be well,

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Dan Marsh
NumbersUSA
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