February 22, 2016
If you have an H-2B visa you have the right to be paid, even if there is no work. Learn more here!
“We were promised that there plenty of work. We traveled to the U.S. with the dream of having greater financial stability than we have here in our Mexico. But in the end we were not given as many hours as we had been promised.”
- Testimony by “Ana,” a Mexican woman, about her experience working in the United States with an H-2B visa.
In December 2015, the U.S. government passed a federal appropriations bill following intense debates around several immigration issues. One of those debates addressed provisions in the budget bill that will affect workers who travel each year to the United States with H-2B visas.
“Ana” is one of the more than 66,000 people who receive H-2B visas each year to work in non-agricultural industries, including landscaping, hospitality, fairs and carnivals, and seafood processing. Ana was recruited in her community in Mexico and worked processing crabmeat. After arriving in the United States, she was often left without work and without an income. Under the rules of her visa, she was not allowed to look for a another job to cover her expenses.
Ana’s experience is common. According to reports by Centro de los Derechos del Migrante and the Southern Poverty Law Center, many H-2B workers arrive in the United States with debt from recruitment- and travel-related expenses, only to find little work. Many have trouble paying for housing and food.
In April 2015, the U.S. government released new rules for the H-2B program that require employers to pay their workers for at least ¾ of the hours promised at the time of recruitment – even if there isn’t enough work for them.
The rules also:
- Require employers to cover workers’ visa and transportation costs,
- Prohibit recruitment fees, and
- Require employers to provide workers with detailed information about working conditions during the recruitment process.
These basic protections are new to the H-2B program, and people seeking H-2B visas should be aware of them!
During the U.S. government’s December appropriations debate, a few members of Congress introduced a bill that aims to eliminate these key protections for H-2B workers. They did not succeed, and the protections are still in effect. However, these politicians did manage to deny funding to the Department of Labor, which enforces H-2B workers’ labor rights, to prevent them from enforcing the ¾ rule and making sure that employers pay their workers even if they have no work to give them. Though the Department of Labor does not have funds to enforce the law, workers still have this right.
This means that each H-2B worker will have to monitor his or her rights carefully. If a company offers you a job with an H-2B visa and does not give you at least ¾ of the work promised, stand up for your rights!
Share your story on Contratados.org and call Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM) if you need individual assistance. You can reach CDM at 1-855-234-9699 from the United States, and at 01-800-590-1773 from Mexico.