Illegal Immigration As Slavery

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will release a report today, titled "Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States," whioch documents the various abuses of undocumented workers at the hands of business.

Among other things, the report charges that those workers are routinely cheated out of wages; forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs; held virtually captive by employers who seize their documents; forced to live in squalid conditions; and denied medical benefits for injuries.

"Congress should reform our broken immigration system, but reform should not rely on creating a vast new guestworker program," said Mary Bauer, director of the SPLC's Immigrant Justice Project and author of the report. "The current program is shamefully abusive in practice, and there is almost no enforcement of worker rights."

More [here].