The United States Has a Kafala Problem
Key takeaways
- Various forms of unfree labor have been a feature of U.S. society since the first tobacco plantations were established in the early English colonies.
- Today, the U.S. agriculture industry in particular continues to depend overwhelmingly on undocumented workers excluded from U.S.
- President Donald Trump’s administration is making undocumented workers more vulnerable than ever by simultaneously hardening exclusionary immigration policies while expanding guest worker programs.
Various forms of unfree labor have been a feature of U.S. society since the first tobacco plantations were established in the early English colonies. From trapping English and Irish immigrants in indentured servitude to subjecting kidnapped Africans to chattel slavery, and from tying freedmen to plantations in Jim Crow-era sharecropping arrangements to exploiting Mexican Bracero guest workers and interned Japanese Americans during World War II, the U.S. economy has always relied on the exploitation of socially marginalized and legally vulnerable workforces.
Today, the U.S. agriculture industry in particular continues to depend overwhelmingly on undocumented workers excluded from U.S. citizenship and threatened by potential deportation—and thus at an immense power disadvantage with their fully enfranchised, politically connected employers.
Various forms of unfree labor have been a feature of U.S. society since the first tobacco plantations were established in the early English colonies. From trapping English and Irish immigrants in indentured servitude to subjecting kidnapped Africans to chattel slavery, and from tying freedmen to plantations in Jim Crow-era sharecropping arrangements to exploiting Mexican Bracero guest workers and interned Japanese Americans during World War II, the U.S. economy has always relied on the exploitation of socially marginalized and legally vulnerable workforces.