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Article

1 May 2010

Author:
John Bowe, Mother Jones [USA]

Bound for America

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How immigration law has set legal foreign workers up for a new kind of indentured servitude--and this time, there's no paying off your contract...Many...[immigrant workers on H-2A visas] arrive with crushing debt from recruiting fees...In practice, they were modern-day indentured servants...One Global Horizons agent,...workers told me, was in the habit of carrying a knife, a gun, or a baseball bat, and of threatening workers with "deportation" if they didn't behave or meet their quotas. Just four days in, Intajak says, he watched the man beat a coworker... A 2007 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center notes that H-2A workers have so few rights that abuse of the system is not limited to a few "bad apple employers," but systematic and predictable. [Includes comments by Global Horizons. Also refers to Aaco International Recruitment, Maui Pineapple Co. (part of Maui Land & Pineapple), Green Acre Farms, Delta Egg Farms, Million Express Manpower]