A visa program designed to protect and provide for temporary farm workers has been used to abuse them in North Carolina, according to nine federal lawsuits filed since 2017.
Every year, thousands of migrant workers, drawn to the U.S. by the promise of good money, leave small towns across Mexico for the farm fields of North Carolina. Issued by the U.S. Department of Labor, the visas they hold, called H-2A visas, require paid transportation, $14.91 an hour currently, and clean housing while workers remain in the country up to 10 months at a time.
Many North Carolina farmers deliver on the promise. But several federal lawsuits filed recently allege that the H-2A program is sometimes misused to abuse, steal from and even traffic legal workers — a pattern of abuse by some farmers and farm labor contractors. It looks like this:
Farm labor contractors, third parties between the growers and the workers, search poor Mexican towns for workers interested in earning substantially more on U.S. farms.
Contractors illegally force some workers to pay hundreds or thousands in fees and travel costs to North Carolina, in some cases not delivering on promises that they’ll be reimbursed.
Some workers are made to work longer hours for minimum wage. Others are given fewer work hours than they were promised.
Contractors or farm owners sometimes take workers’ documentation, preventing migrants from leaving. Some make them work second jobs. Some physically or sexually abuse the visa...
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