A License to Exploit: The Need to Reform the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Guest Worker Program (Comment)

If the current guest worker program is not revised, it will continue to exercise its unfair and permanent reality for the estimated 45,000 Mexican migrants who work under the program: their deportation back to the impoverished conditions from which they came and had eagerly left. Additionally, the current program limits the legal protections given to its participants who are not afforded the rights of permanent residents or citizens. Paradoxically, the program also increases illegal immigration, exploits guest workers and creates discrimination due to the employer sanction provisions. Sen. Kennedy's and Rep. Berman's bills solve these issues by offering (i) eventual permanent residency to the guest workers; (ii) allowing the guest workers to be protected under the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (AWPA); and (iii) maintaining the calculation of the wage currently offered to guest workers