Prism, August 29, 2023: There is slavery in the fields…
There is slavery in the fields of North Carolina by Tina Vásquez, Prism, August 29, 2023
https://prismreports.org/2023/08/29/slavery-fields-north-carolina-h-2a/
““I’ll never forget something that advocate and former farmworker Leticia Zavala said to me during an interview.
“There is slavery in the fields of North Carolina.” She said it almost in passing, as part of a larger laundry list of abusive and deadly conditions experienced by farmworkers in the state as part of the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program, a guest worker program overseen by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that allows American employers to temporarily hire migrant workers to perform agricultural work. A whopping 90% of these workers hail from Mexico. This is not surprising, given that the H-2A program is an iteration of the Bracero Program, a bilateral agreement with Mexico that, from 1942 to 1964, allowed for the temporary entry of millions of migrants to perform agricultural labor in the U.S. The program was ultimately abolished because of systemic wage theft, abuse, and exploitation. Lee G. Williams, the DOL official in charge at the time, described the Bracero Program as “legalized slavery.“‘