It was through New York Times Columnist Bob Herbert that I was first made aware of the report.  For the first time in a long time I made a few more systemic connections on U.S. immigration.  The report provides important lessons on guestworker programs past and present.

The bracero program--a guest-worker program that existed between 1942 and 1964 and saw the influx of some 4.5 million guest workers from Mexico--is hardly brought up in the present despite its enormous influence over migration trends.  In political science your taught that oppression, economic inequality, or any number of factors that lead to unrest cannot, by themselves, lead to revolution.  By the same logic, suffering in the South cannot, by itself, account for migration to the North.  I believe the bracero program is the single most influential contribution to the massive undocumented migration of the present. 

The fact that the U.S. provided the spark responsible for the massive influx of undocumented migrants is a powerful concept.  It also makes it somewhat disingenous when people that were labeled "guests" are now labeled "illegal", and populations of people that were told to come are suddenly told to stop.  This was the most interesting connection I thought I made in all of this.

The purpose of this report, of course, is to document the systematic abuses that guest-worker populations suffer from.  Some changes definitely need to be made to guest-worker programs if the U.S. hopes to implement this with a semblance of humanity.  Most appalling is how guest workers that arrive on H-2b (non-agricultural) visas are treated.  Even though Guatemalans make up a small proportion of guest-worker visas it was the plight of Guatemalans that was highlighted the most, especially in the forestry industry.  They go into debt to pay for the visas in their home countries, they are underpaid, poorly housed, and constantly threatened, all of which is against the law--who is illegal now?  Below is the logo for just one of many companies that has been sued for this type of abuse.

Politicans like to depict a narrative of the U.S. built on concepts of freedom, democracy, equality, and justice, but this is just another example of how the U.S. is built upon ignoring those concepts or applying them only to a certain people.  Some would say the U.S. isn't built on freedom, but on denying people freedom.  It isn't built on equality, but on inequality; it isn't built on justice, but on injustice; it isn't ruled by the people, it is ruled by some people.