Indians concerned at H-2A & H-2B ban on some

India Post News Service
WASHINGTON, DC: The US Department of Homeland Security has announced that workers from the Philippines, Ethiopia, and the Dominican Republic will not be eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B visa programs for the next year. This in a way sent a sense of flutter among Indians too.
The consensus among Asian Americans is that the administration and Congress should work together to reform our broken immigration system that leaves workers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse by bad employers and greedy recruiters. This should not affect the hardworking immigrants in the U.S. The immigrant workforce deserves opportunities and protections, things that will only be guaranteed with appropriate oversight and accountability over our current guest worker programs.

H-2A visas allow foreign workers to work in the U.S. as agricultural workers. H-2B visas allow foreign workers to work in the U.S. as non-agricultural workers, such as resort, hospitality, landscaping, food service, and construction workers. Both of which are temporary visas for low-wage workers.
The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) Executive Director Alvina Yeh said that the H-2A and H-2B visa programs in the USA are an important source of income for a large number of workers in developing countries like Philippines and elsewhere to find work and support their families.

“Until greedy corporations and abusive employers are held to account, the administration should not expand the program or unfairly target individual countries and workers. By quietly banning low-wage Asian workers, the administration is dangerously upholding the model minority myth, hoping to easily sweep us out the door, but we will not stay silent”, Yeh observed
“Instead of targeting vulnerable populations, the Administration should address greedy corporations and abusive employers. In order to strengthen labor conditions in the U.S., the administration should hold labor violators accountable, invest in Department of Labor investigations to raise workplace condition standards and safety, provide data transparency, and more. All of which can be applied to the H-2B visa program to strengthen it as an opportunity for low-wage workers, as we work towards long-term policy solutions that guarantees workers a path to citizenship,” she added.