Guestworker Group Exposes Forced Labor in Tennessee

[cory777]

Source: Labor Notes

Hilario Jimenez was a farmer from a poor town in the Mexican state of Nayarit. Working on tobacco, bean, and tomato farms, he would earn as little as $12 a day.

In April, Jimenez took on $1,000 of debt—a crushing amount in rural Mexico—for the promise of fair, well-paid work in the United States on an H2B guestworker visa. “I don’t like being separated from my family, but the necessity makes you do it,” Jimenez said.

Guestworker program rules bind workers to one employer. No matter how severely an employer exploits them, guestworkers cannot leave to work for anyone else.

He and 11 other Mexican guestworkers arrived in Smyrna, Tennessee, to work for a company called Vanderbilt Landscaping. Vanderbilt obtained guestworker visas by claiming to the U.S. Department of Labor that it could not find a single American to fill its highway-side landscaping jobs—at a time when Tennessee suffers a 10.1 percent unemployment rate.

Read more: http://labornotes.org/2010/08/guestworker-group-exposes-forced-labor-tennessee

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Breaking Uncensored News http://activistnews.blogspot.com

[Joanne98]

1. Yep! That's why I'm 100% against guest worker visas. This shit goes on all the time.

AND I would bet my life that the business owner is a Republican!

[Lightning Count]

2. But these are the jobs that Americans won't do. nt

[Dappleganger]

7. Bullshit.

Americans won't work for sub-par wages, that much is true.

[femrap]

4. Why isn't the owner of this

landscaping biz in jail???

There's like some 'boyz club' of repugnants that get away with everything. I had a State Senator of Ohio tell me face to face that all his buddies who owned businesses hired illegals...'that's the only way they can make some money.'

The laws governing work visas need to be changed....shit, it's legalized slavery.

[davidinalameda]

8. did you call the authorities on the state senator's friends?

or did you just hold this info to share on the internet

[femrap]

9. He wouldn't give me

the names of those business owners. duh.

[davidinalameda]

14. maybe if you ask him nice

[Hello_Kitty]

5. Yep. And my ass this company couldn't find anyone local to work for $12 an hour.

They wanted guest workers they could treat like shit and cheat out of wages.

[Lightning Count]

3. Before we jump to conclusions

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100817/NEWS01/8170335/Smyrna-landscaping-company-denies-abusing-Mexican-workers&template=artsemantics&server=MOC-WN0289

[cory777]

6. HMMM?

"The Vanderbilt family said that out of 18 guest workers, six kept their passports and the rest decided to have the office hold them for safekeeping." - Here hold my passport for 'safe keeping'.

"Gomez said he hurt his back in 2003, and the Vanderbilts helped him put his shoes on and helped pay his airfare back to Mexico." - How nice of them. They put his shoes on and shipped him back to Mexico.

[Heywood J]

10. Keeping another human being in slavery is something that

should be a capital crime.

For example, anyone can murder another person in the heat of passion or when provoked by pushing the right buttons, and can do so before they even consciously realize they've killed the other person. Enslaving another human being is done over weeks, months, and years. That's more than enough time for the perpetrator to realize and understand what they're doing, cool down, or seek help. It takes a conscious choice on the perpetrator's part to keep committing one of the most heinous acts imaginable, over and over and over again, and to reduce another human being to something less than human in order to exploit and brutalize them.

No one just snaps or wakes up one day and decides to become a slave-owner or to enslave other human beings on the spur of the moment. Odds are probably pretty good the slaver has committed other crimes as a lead-up to this, or participated in some sort of conspiracy. Enslaving another human being in this day and age is a good sign of being a sociopath. That's not a person that can be rehabilitated or that I want to waste taxpayer dollars on housing and feeding, when that money could be put to better use helping the slaver's victims, the homeless, the poor, the downtrodden, or other criminals who can actually be rehabilitated.

[KakistocracyHater]

11. everywhere I look they're bringing back 19th C values, from all directions

it seems. It must be easier to be so selfish.

[defendandprotect]

12. Elite/right wing dream . . . "third world America" -- they've been working on it for decades!!

[KakistocracyHater]

13. yes & there's a known path away from it too, so why is the DLC going along

instead? Do we even have enough leaders who are genuine?

[davidinalameda]

15. the DLC wants a 3rd world America?

really?

[defendandprotect]

17. DLC is corporate-wing of Democratic Party ... what do you think?

[davidinalameda]

18. I think no

but obviously I'm not as smart as you

[RainDog]

16. I heard about this on Democracy Now! a week or so ago. thanks for posting

because I didn't get to hear the whole program.

slavery by another name...