H-2B visas

-EMILY WALSH
I worked with Elisa researching H-2B visas through the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice. As a first year student still looking for a career niche, I was happy to get to research this issue, which involved both employment and immigration law, and is also an area of law that is very politically relevant. Although I knew guest worker visas were controversial and had heard discussion about them on NPR, I didn’t know very much about them before coming to New Orleans. I quickly learned of the extensive problems associated with guest worker visas, and the horrific problems faced by those who enter the country hoping to stay here only temporarily, to make money for their families and return home. Because the structure of guest worker visas ties a worker to an employer, the worker is completely at the mercy of the employer who brought them into the country. This is obviously problematic and creates a situation of unequal bargaining and is conducive to worker exploitation. Company representatives lure workers in from all over the world, with promises of a high salary and a forty-hour work week. Most take out thousands of dollars in loans to pay for their visas. The reality when these guest workers arrive is often quite different from what they were promised. They are given few hours of work per week and are charged for housing and food. They are then unable to pay back their loans, unable to earn money through other employment, and often their passports are taken, making them unable to leave.

There are thousands of workers in this situation, and yet there is almost no case history. It was great to work on a project for such an underrepresented population, and I hope to read about positive progress with these lawsuits.

On a broader level, seeing the lower ninth ward, and spending time with the Workers' Center for Racial Justice was an intense experience. We spent a lot of time "debriefing" with this group. In many of the sessions I noticed that nearly every person described their experience as "interesting." This is not one of my favorite words, and is one I tried to hammer out of student writing in my limited experience teaching composition to high school students at summer school. Yet, when I came back and people asked me about my experiences, I found myself saying "it was interesting." I used it because it's a hard experience to describe and while my experience was certainly not bad, I can't say my work experience was overwhelmingly positive either. I enjoyed the research I did, and love New Orleans, but it is difficult to spend essentially four days (day one was orientation) getting into an issue, only to leave it. It seems this is a serious problem or New Orleans right now, as volunteers come and go, and there seems to be a dearth of solid, consistent leadership that might be able to tie individual volunteer efforts into a more constructive whole.

Even in our involvement with the Worker's Center, just as the 12 or so law students Elisa and I worked with got into our research, we would be asked to stop and go to a debriefing to reflect on our experience. I appreciate the value of reflection, but these sessions were often angry racially fueled airings of grief, rather than reflections on progress and work. The sessions themselves took three or more hours out of our workday, making them a direct impediment to progress. I certainly understand the level of anger, especially for the people in the lower 9th, and as Professor Quigley told us, New Orleans is at the anger stage in the grieving process right now. However, while anger can be used as a tool for community organizing, it does not seem like the best method to achieve positive progress, especially with outside volunteer efforts. This worries me because New Orleans is still very much a wounded city, and there is a real question as to whether the minority population will ever return, and as to whether the lower ninth ward will be rebuilt. Volunteer efforts seem to be an essential part of rebuilding, but right now there is more anger than there is leadership and direction. There is significant controversy as to the direction of New Orleans, and who will get to choose that direction. It is difficult to organize volunteers to work towards a goal without a plan or framework to work within, and I know of other volunteers who relocated to the area to help, only to leave frustrated. I'm glad I went to New Orleans and do feel like I was able to contribute to a solution to a problem that can be significantly ameliorated by a court outcome. While it is a small part of the problem New Orleans faces, the judicial system has a clear framework and rules to follow and I hope the outcome of the case helps the currently powerless guest worker population in Louisiana.