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blue bits. red rocks.
Thursday 28 May 2009

How can we preserve immigrants’ vital contribution to our economy while also preventing their workplace vulnerability from undermining American wages and working conditions? The answer is to strengthen the ability of immigrant workers to demand a better deal at work, claiming the same wages and working conditions that similarly-skilled natives command, and in the process ensuring that employers don’t prefer immigrants simply because they are more exploitable. A guest worker program, which permanently isolates a class of workers in a separate and unequal program, cannot do this. At its heart, a guest worker plan ensures a continued stream of workers available for legalized exploitation. The best guest worker proposals promise to enforce workplace rights for guest workers and even mandate that guest workers only be hired at the prevailing wage for a given industry. These measures, though, can only partially mitigate the impact of establishing a permanent place for temporary workers in our economy. No matter what protections are in place, their temporary status ensures that guest workers will always remain more vulnerable and less secure than the mainstream of American workers. In many cases, it will still make economic sense for employers to prefer less-empowered guest workers over natives demanding better wages and working conditions. Guest-Worker Caste System

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