Bernie Sanders Discussing Immigration Work Authorization Programs With Lou Dobbs

[Hassin Bin Sober]

23. Sure they are. Look it up.

Using guest worker J1 visas to fill resorts, restaurants and beaches at low wages and tax avoidance is a real thing.

With youth unemployment at astronomical levels, we don't need to bring in 130,000 guest workers to fill Sumer jobs. Well not unless you don't want to pay above minimum wage and pay the employer portion of employment taxes that is.

What better way to get slave err I mean "cultural exchange" labor than to have the state department do your recruiting and send you vulnerable employees you can pay less than minimum wage after you deduct fees. Nice and legal, see?

Staffing companies have been pushing cheap overseas labor based on the payroll taxes alone.

A program started during the Cold War as a cultural exchange tool turned in to a tool for large corporations to hire slave labor.

Here's what The Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about it:

The undeniable conclusion is that these J-1 programs, an initiative once envisioned as a tool of diplomacy, has become little more than a source of cheap labor for employers.

https://www.splcenter.org/20140202/culture-shock-exploitation-j-1-cultural-exchange-workers

Executive Summary

They come to experience all America has to offer.

They hope to pay their way by working a summer job as they experience a new culture and learn English. They work in our hotels, restaurants, fast-food chains and amusement parks. They work for companies with names synonymous with the United States: McDonald’s, Disney, Hilton and more.

They’re J-1 guest workers.

Based on the SPLC’s investigation, it is clear, in fact, that the program suffers from the same flaws as other guest worker programs. The SPLC has represented thousands of guest workers in lawsuits to protect them from wage theft, discrimination, illegal recruitment practices and other abuses. As evidenced by these lawsuits, temporary foreign workers are extremely vulnerable to recruitment and workplace abuse.

The J-1 program, however, is much larger than the nation’s other major low-wage guest worker program — the H-2 temporary worker program. But the J-1 program lacks many of that program’s worker protections. Perhaps more troubling is that the U.S. government and its sponsors globally advertise the J-1 program as a cultural exchange — not a temporary work program — even though that is clearly what the Summer Work Travel and the Trainee and Intern categories have become.