Coming to America
"[T]wo-thirds of guest workers are hired under ... subsection, H-2B, created in the small-government Reagan years to fill non-agricultural jobs. H-2B workers exist in a regulatory vacuum with few rights and no access to legal services. Program regulations state only that workers must be paid the prevailing wage in their industry, and the Labor Department claims it lacks authority to enforce even that. While the department doesn't keep statistics on how many H-2B employers violate labor laws, public-interest lawyers point to several cases where companies were permitted to continue importing workers for years despite a pattern of abuse."
FELICIA MELLO in The Nation magazine.