Several plans to overhaul the nation鈥檚 immigration system, including Senate Bill 744, contain important protections for U.S. and foreign workers that must be preserved as the legislation moves through Congress. But they lack critical protections to prevent foreign workers from enduring the kind of exploitation prevalent in the current H-2 guest worker program.
With today's introduction of a bipartisan immigration bill in the U.S. Senate aimed at overhauling the nation鈥檚 broken immigration system, the Southern Poverty Law Center called for immigration reform that protects the human and civil rights of low-skill workers.
The Southern Poverty Law Center joined poultry workers, advocates and others gathered outside U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt鈥檚 district office in Gadsden, Ala., today to urge him to block new poultry industry regulations that threaten the health and safety of workers and consumers across the country.
Poultry workers in Alabama often suffer significant injuries as they endure grueling, dangerous working conditions and frequent threats of deportation or firing, a problem that could grow worse under proposed new USDA regulations, according to a report by the 蜜桃传媒 and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.
Every day in Alabama, thousands of people report to work at vast poultry processing plants. Inside these frigid plants, workers stand almost shoulder-to-shoulder as chicken carcasses zip by on high-speed processing lines. Together, small teams of workers may hang, gut or slice more than 100 birds in a single minute. It鈥檚 a process they鈥檒l repeat for eight hours or more in order to prepare birds for dinner tables and restaurants across America.
This report, updated in February 2013, details the systematic exploitation of foreign workers who come to this country for temporary jobs under the nation's H-2 guestworker program. Based on dozens of legal cases and interviews with thousands of guestworkers, it documents how guestworkers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs, and held virtually captive by employers.
When Alabama legislators revised the state鈥檚 anti-immigrant law in 2012, they passed a law requiring the state to maintain an online list of immigrants who are detained by law enforcement, who appear in court for any violation of state law, and who unable to prove they are not 鈥渦nlawfully present aliens.鈥� It provided no means for people to be removed from this 鈥渂lack list鈥� if the listing is an error or if their immigration status changes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a federal lawsuit to stop this state-sanctioned 鈥渂lacklisting鈥� of immigrants, which could encourage harassment and violence.
Alabama has made a costly and ill-advised decision to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to criminalize Alabamians for providing shelter 鈥� or even a ride 鈥� to a person unable to prove his immigration status, the Southern Poverty Law Center said today after the state appealed a lower court鈥檚 ruling against its anti-immigrant law, also known as HB 56.
The 蜜桃传媒 today called on the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) to reduce the wildly excessive rates that telephone companies charge for collect calls made by state inmates 鈥� fees that are 15 times higher than charges for calls made outside of jails and prisons.
A federal court has ordered a Georgia forestry company to pay $11.8 million to 4,000 foreign guestworkers who were cheated out of wages while employed by the company 鈥� the largest court award to date on behalf of guestworkers.
