Indian migrant workers in New Orleans go on a hunger strike for racial justice

Immigration reform has been a big topic in the news lately. It has been a major topic throughout several candidate debates for the 2008 election and its becoming such a major problem that even conservatives are starting to budge. The current Republican candidate, in stark contrast to the remainder of his party (i.e. Tom Tancredo), has actually event attempted major bipartisan reform of the existing immigration system. In fact, it is one of the few issues where the even the current president (yeah, remember that guy?) has actually strayed from the extreme right. However, let's examine more carefully exactly what the Bush administration has proposed for immigration reform.

The Bush administration has been a major proponent of the H-2B Visa, or guest worker's visa. Given that a large number of immigrants only plan on staying in the United States temporarily to make some money before returning to home, this seems like a good idea. This also appeases most nervous white Americans who are so frightened of dangerous immigrants spoiling their sanctified NASCAR culture with their primitive jungle ways. However, in practice, the H-2B Visa operates as little more than a loophole for slave labor, as the following video reveals.



A group of over 100 Indian skilled workers have essentially been fooled into paying $20,000 for American green cards, only to find themselves in forced labor under the Signal International corporation. Of course, Signal denies any knowledge that the guest workers were tricked, blaming the Indian recruiters instead, and claims that they have provided suitable wages and working conditions for the workers. On March 6th, the workers walked out of their job and on May 14th, they began a hunger strike in front of Congress demanding Continued Presence in the United States under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. (Much more details can be found on this blog here.) Apparently the hunger strike ended this past Thursday, though I don't know came as a result.

Human trafficking is the third most profitable black market enterprise in the world, just behind the drug trade and black market arms dealing, and despite popular belief, the majority of human trafficking is not related to prostitution (though it certainly does represent a portion of the human trafficking industry), but rather forced labor. In practice, the guest worker program benefits large corporations, such as Signal, while harming vulnerable poor guest workers, such as the 100 or so Indian workers in this story, and poor workers at home, who are left unemployed. Although the 100 workers in this story seems like a tiny group relative to the 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants living in the US right now, major immigration reforms will bear implications upon 20 million of those people. As the 2008 elections approach, we need to be better informed about the consequences of these policies, especially as November rolls around and McCain completes his metamorphosis into the spawn of Bush.