The H-2 visa program invites foreign workers to do some of the most menial labor in America. Then it leaves them at the mercy of their employers. Thousands of these workers have been abused — deprived of their fair pay, imprisoned, starved, beaten, raped, and threatened with deportation if they dare complain. And the government says it can do little to help. A BuzzFeed News investigation.
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Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.buzzfeed.com
Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.
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Source: www.globalresearch.ca
See on Scoop.it – Community Village Daily
“Every day, about 5,500 detained immigrants work in the nation’s immigration detention centers. Some are paid a dollar a day; others earn nothing. The locations shown are facilities that the federal government reimburses for this work.”
Is this not exactly how SLAVERY operated?
Forced labor with no wage.
Freedom?
For who?
See on www.nytimes.com
Originally posted on News One:
Since writer and cultural critic Ta-Nehisi Coates made his compelling “Case For Reparations” in The Atlantic, it has been a hot-button topic and the questions have come fast and furious.
What is reparations? What should it look like? How has slavery and subsequent systems of oppression had a continuing impact on Black Americans?
Will the United States ever pay reparations for its role in what amounts to domestic terrorism against African Americans?
The truth is: The government has already paid reparations — to slave owners.
See on Scoop.it – Community Village World History
Governor Powell Clayton of Arkansas observed:
Undoubtedly the underlying motive for this effort to bring in Chinese laborers was to punish the negro for having abandoned the control of his old master, and to regulate the conditions of employment and the scale of wages to be paid him.”
U.S. business leaders always want the lowest cost labor.
When U.S. unions demanded a living wage with reasonable benefits, instead of complying, businesses moved their manufacturing out of the U.S.
Money and manufacturing easily cross borders. However, (im)migration laws make it difficult for people to cross borders.
See on abagond.wordpress.com
In latest push, plant workers meet with lawmakers to share accounts of injuries caused at current speeds.
See on www.washingtonpost.com
“… public policy that should raise the most suspicion is trade policy, which fostered the offshoring of more than 2 million manufacturing jobs after Congress normalized trade relations with China in 2000. But an even more fundamental factor in the declining share of working Americans is the technological automation that has eliminated millions of jobs and is poised to eliminate millions more.
…47 percent of U.S. workers have a high probability of seeing their jobs automated over the next 20 years…”
I would prefer the author didn’t single out China. China continues to be blamed in the media because they have the worker capacity to do the jobs that are building the vast majority of consumer electronics and everything else.
On the one hand Americans love their low cost consumer electronics. On the other hand Americans complain about loosing jobs to China.
What ends up happening is that Americans start hating on all Asians (not knowing the difference between cultural groups), and next segregation, xenophobia, hate crimes, scapegoating, and maybe even immigration restrictions based on race again with the myopic thinking that Chinese people are taking all the jobs – at the low end in China and at the high end in the U.S.
There is an underlying injustice from the U.S. here:
See on www.washingtonpost.com
They are part of a sisterhood of sorts — spouses of software engineers and computer programmers. Many of them hold multiple advanced degrees but are not legally permitted to work in the U.S.
Freedom and Liberty – for some.
See on seattletimes.com
“Kent Wong Director of the UCLA Labor Center and VP of the California Federation of Teachers spoke with GRITtv about the AFL-CIO broadening it’s inclusivity.”
Mr. Wong explains that his mentor, Cesar Chavez was able to organized undocumented workers to take on some of the most powerful interests in the U.S. – and win.
See on www.youtube.com
“GRITtv: The demand for jobs was the great unmet demand of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. While many have made that point, few have talked plainly about why the demand for federal investment in training and jobs for the unemployed dropped out of the picture of civil rights. Scot Nakagawa is not afraid to talk about it. Nakagawa is co-founder of Changelab, a social movement think tank, and the author of the regularly provocative Race Files.”
We invest in incarceration instead of education.
See on www.youtube.com
