PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 4, 2015
PRESS CONTACT:
Alissa Escarce, Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. (CDM)
1-855-234-9699 (U.S.); 01-800-590-1773 (Mexico)
U.S. Senators Take Action to Protect H-2B Workers’ Rights during Appropriations
On December 3, 2015, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Bernard Sanders (D-VT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Al Franken (D-MN) sent a letter to the Senate Leadership and Appropriations Committee Chairs, urging them not to include riders in appropriations legislation for Fiscal Year 2016 that would strip essential worker protections from the H-2B temporary work visa program.
Every year, tens of thousands of international workers, most of them from Mexico, travel to the United States with H-2B temporary work visas to work in low-wage, non-agricultural industries including landscaping, carnivals, hospitality, construction, and seafood processing. For most of the program’s existence, workers on H-2B visas have enjoyed virtually no labor protections. Abuses including fraud and illegal fees during international labor recruitment, as well as depressed wages and dangerous workplaces, have been endemic to the H-2B visa program.
In April 2015, the U.S. Departments of Labor and Homeland Security published new rules for the H-2B program that establish basic worker protections for both temporary foreign workers and the U.S. workers they work alongside. These rules, which are currently in effect, increase transparency in international labor recruitment, require employers to pay more competitive wages, and establish minimum hours guarantees for H-2B workers. The rules represent a victory for H-2B workers and their allies, including CDM, who have advocated for stronger protections for over a decade.
Now, members of Congress, led by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and backed by industry, are attempting to use the federal appropriations process to roll back these hard-won protections while skirting the legislative and rulemaking processes. Riders–or proposed additions–to House and Senate appropriations bills would allow employers to pay H-2B workers less than the average local wage for their type of work and eliminate minimum hours guarantees. While reducing worker protections, these provisions would also expand the number of H-2B workers from the current 66,000 per year to an estimated 200,000 by 2017.
“As you know, Democratic Congressional leadership has made it clear that they will not agree to spending measures with ideological policy riders,” reads the Senators’ letter. “The appropriations process should not be used to bypass the legislative process or make substantive changes to immigration law.”
On December 4, the International Labor Recruitment Working Group, which CDM chairs, sent a letter to members of Congress, also urging them to oppose these harmful appropriation appropriations riders. The letter was signed by nearly eighty national and regional organizations.
“CDM applauds these Senators and organizations for taking action to protect internationally recruited workers’ basic labor rights,” said Rachel Micah-Jones, CDM Founder and Executive Director, who published an Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun about the issue. “It is crucial that our leaders in Congress hear the message and ensure that crucial labor protections are not gutted in the appropriations process.”