Free Republic

Stan Eury turned an obscure bit of immigration law into a mammoth federal program -- and a lucrative business empire, importing hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers for legal American jobs. Except that some of the jobs weren't real jobs, and an untold number of those workers may never have returned to Mexico at all. In November 2009, seven men got off a bus in Monterrey, Mexico, and made their way through the crowded and chaotic downtown to the concrete box that housed the United States Consulate. Inside, the men told a consular officer that they had been invited to...

Congress ought to examine and end existing abuses in U.S. guest worker programs before it starts a new one for illegal immigrants, a civil rights group said Monday. The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., said foreigners hired through programs for farm and non-farm laborers work in conditions akin to indentured servitude. Discrimination based on national origin, race, age, disability and gender is deeply entrenched in the H-2 guest-worker system, the report said. Because they are bound to a single employer and don't have access to legal resources, guest workers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to...