We educate and push governments to protect the workers that employers bring to the US or Canada by ensuring transparency and accountability in the temporary foreign worker visa system.
We work with governments in Mexico and Central America to ensure that the recruitment of their citizens to work abroad is free of fraud and abuse and that they help their citizens achieve justice across borders when their labor is exploited abroad.
By synthesizing the advocacy and expertise gained by U.S. lawyers and Justice in Motion Defender Network advocates, we foster powerful alliances between partners in government and civil society to develop policy solutions that address worker exploitation from a transnational perspective. In recent years, we have educated policymakers about key problems in foreign temporary worker visa programs on both sides of the border; encouraged Labor and Foreign ministry officials in countries of origin to consider improved enforcement of recruitment protections for migrants; and raised awareness about the importance of portable justice among policymakers and civil society throughout the North-Central America corridor.
Our Work
Policy Advocacy
Temporary Foreign Worker Visa Governance
Justice in Motion published Visas, Inc.: Corporate Control and Policy Incoherence in the Temporary Labor System. to provide a panoramic examination of U.S. temporary work visas. The findings revealed a fragmented system that lacks transparency and government oversight, resulting in abuse of both foreign and U.S workers. U.S. immigration policy has moved away from its roots in permanent labor migration and embraced, for better or worse, a constantly metastasizing temporary worker visa program. Rather than developing a coherent, unitary system, the U.S. has responded piecemeal to employer demands and created a patchwork of visas subject to distinct rules.
With the launch of Visa Pages: U.S. Temporary Foreign Worker Visas, we endeavored to continue to add information and perspective to the major non-immigrant work visas highlighted in Visas, Inc.
Improving Recruitment Regulations
Justice in Motion published Recruitment Rules: Countries of Employment to detail the legal framework for international labor recruitment in four common temporary work programs:
1. U.S. nonimmigrant H-2A visa (agricultural)
2. U.S. nonimmigrant H-2A visa (nonagricultural)
3. Canadian Temporary Foreign Worker Program
4. Bilateral Special Program for Agricultural Workers with Mexico and Caribbean nations
Then, Recruitment Rules: Countries of Origin to examine the labor recruitment laws, regulations, and protections implicated when workers are recruited for jobs abroad from the following five countries:
1. El Salvador
2. Guatemala
3. Honduras
4. Nicaragua
5. Mexico