Why Guest Workers Are Easily Exploited
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDJULY 1, 2016
So far this year, employers in the United States have hired some 80,000 foreign guest workers for low-skilled nonagricultural jobs. If a bipartisan group in Congress gets its way, the number could soon rise as high as 264,000.
Employers say they need to import these workers — called H-2B workers after their visa category — because no comparable American workers are available. That claim does not stand up. When labor is scarce, unemployment falls and wages rise. But unemployment is high in all of the top H-2B fields, which include landscaping, groundskeeping, construction, hospitality and seafood processing, while wages in those fields have long been flat or declining.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/opinion/why-guest-workers-are-easily-exploited.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=2READ MORE
