Workers’ Rights Project Helps Expose Challenges Faced by Migrant Women in H-2A Visa Program

(Raleigh, NC) – North Carolina is one of the largest employers of H-2A temporary agricultural workers in the country.  Despite that, it is not typical to see women at H-2A migrant labor camps.  When women H-2A workers arrive in the U.S., they experience the same common labor violations as their male counterparts: not being reimbursed for their visa and travel expenses to come to North Carolina, wages below the required hourly wage, illegal kickbacks to their employer, and more. 

In addition, women are frequently also subject to gender-based abuses, unsafe working conditions, inhumane housing, and other problems unique to their status as H-2A workers.

The particular challenges for female H-2A workers are painstakingly chronicled in Tina Vasquez’s latest reporting in The Prism: She managed to get a temporary farmworker visa. Once in the U.S., she endured abuse and exploitation. This important story highlights the vulnerabilities, risks, and systemic lack of protections migrant workers face, and quotes Carol Brooke, NCJC’s Senior Attorney on the Workers’ Rights Project.

“I assume that abuse in this program is very common for women. But many of us don’t speak up because of fear, because of the threats they make against us. Many of us also don’t understand the laws,” said the worker.   

Equally troubling is that there typically isn’t a line of formal communication or any kind of notification process between state agencies and federal agencies like the Dept. of Labor. This means that if a Georgia state agency is investigating a labor contractor, for example, federal DOL is likely to be unaware and might continue granting the contractor H-2A workers, said Carol Brooke, senior attorney with NCJC’s Workers’ Rights Project.

Read the article published in The Prism to learn about the policies and agencies standing in the way of workplace reform for female migrant workers.