The Exploitation of Legal, Temporary Workers in the United States

Abstract

The population of legal temporary workers has fluctuated at different points in U.S. history, but their work conditions have remained almost universally abysmal. Historical patterns of employer behavior and political policy have allowed these conditions to exist today. “Agricultural exceptionalism,” the political practice of granting special labor rights exemptions to agricultural employers, has been a critical cause in the failure of the nation's two largest temporary worker policies to date, the Bracero Program and the Immigration Reform and Control Act. An examination of these two moments in temporary worker history sheds insight on the negative power of agricultural exceptionalism, the precedent that it has set for the current day, and the type of policies that the U.S. must avoid in the future. [From Introduction]