Trump finally said something I agree with. He said he’d make it a priority to get rid of or reform temporary worker visa programs.
Currently, these visas (H1 and H2 series) are shams that make it easier for employers to hire cheap and compliant labor forces. I know this because I enforced the pay and working conditions portions of some of these visas for the US Department of Labor. Uses of so-called guestworker programs that I witnessed included tobacco harvesting (H2A) and landscaping (H2B). I am aware of similar abuses in the H1A, H1B (most often tech workers), and H1C (nurses, ended in 2012).
In the case of the H2 visa programs, employers are required to advertise jobs for native people before hiring migrants. They are required to pay migrants wages that would be attractive to US people, and to offer US people work if US people arrive while visa holders are employed. In many cases, they are required to provide decent housing for the visa holder as well as certain transportation cost from the country in which the worker lives. Because there are too few enforcement agents, these requirements are rarely enforced.
The programs have created a reliable and docile workforce for certain employers. If their workers complained or failed to produce, employers of guestworker programs may threaten to kick them out of the country, or, at the very least, make it impossible to return for the next season. These employees return year after year, and have little recourse if they are mistreated.
There are entire industries that would not exist without the cheap labor and easily-exploitable labor of guestworkers. For example, my own experience has shown me that if farmers had to hire native workers at the going rates native workers can command, and provide conditions of employment that native workers would willingly endure, tobacco and cotton harvests would no longer be economically feasible in Tennessee. In this way, the program serves as a subsidy to agricultural employers. It also benefits props up smaller producers who cannot compete without cheap labor. In the case of Kentucky and Tennessee tobacco, it’s a subsidy for the rural white people who voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
I suspect I disagree with Mr. Trump inasmuch as I believe anyone who wants to come and work in the US should have a clear path to citizenship. Putting everyone who works in the US on equal footing ensures that everyone competes on the basis of his or her merits. Otherwise, employers will habitually pick the employees against whom they can exact the greatest coercive force. The only thing that denying those who want to work here citizenship does is keep them powerless and exploitable. Furthermore, I believe that enforcement action should be against employers who employ migrant labor under exploitative circumstances. The Department of Labor should be funded fully, and simple paths to citizenship should be offered to those who want to work in our great county.
Instead of providing protections for workers by providing a way towards permanent residence, Mr. Trump will likely gut the temporary programs, deport workers, and make residency requirements more stringent. Whatever the case may be, I predict there will soon be a tobacco farmer some place in northern Tennessee who will curse the day he voted for our racist President.
