A Mexican migrant paid a recruiter thousands of dollars for work in the US, only to endure slavery, time in jail and finally deportation.
To make sure others did not fall prey to the same man, the migrant wrote a review of the recruiter on Contratados.org, a site for migrants from Mexico working in the US.
The site, which means “hired” in Spanish, is described by the founding labor rights group as a Yelp or TripAdvisor for migrant workers, many of whom pay large fees to recruitment agencies, but are then trapped in abusive employment — exploited, unpaid and in debt.
“This man tricked me... I had to work without pay for two months,” the Mexican worker wrote in an anonymous posting on the site.
“He promised me a tourist visa and finally he gave me a false visa stuck on my passport for which he charged me 35,000 pesos [US$2,000]. At the border, I was detained and I was put in jail. I was in jail for three days and after that I was deported,” the worker wrote.
Rachel Micah-Jones, founder and executive director of the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), the Center for Migrant Rights, for workers in Mexico and the US, which launched Contratados in September last year, said the site lets migrant workers rate their experience of recruiters or employers online, by voicemail or by text message.
Last year, more than 130,000 Mexicans received temporary employment visas for the US, and she said she hoped the site would help workers avoid being duped, exploited or charged illegal fees.
“They’re leaving messages warning of recruiters that charge excessive fees, or fraudulent recruiters, bad housing conditions, poor conditions in general,” Micah-Jones told activists and trade union organizers at a migrant labor conference in Indonesia.
Micah-Jones is one of many advocates worldwide trying to end recruitment fees, a practice around the world that often leads to bonded or forced labor.
An estimated 232 million people migrated abroad for work in 2013, according to the UN, which has noted growing concern over fraudulent recruitment practices.
A recent survey across 12 countries in Asia and the Middle East found that 77 percent of migrant workers had paid recruitment fees averaging more than US$1,300.
Nepali migrants, with a monthly salary of US$300, pay up to US$1,500 to work in the Middle East, while other South Asians pay up to US$7,000, said Tatcee Lorena Macabuag, of the Migrant Forum in Asia — a non-governmental network that conducted the survey — and secretariat for an open working group on recruitment reform.
“Can you imagine where the migrant will get the money to pay these fees?” Macabuag said, calling for “ethical recruitment” in which employers pay all costs for migration.
Many migrants sell property or use it as collateral to get loans for these fees, making it difficult to leave abusive employers for fear of losing their money, property and jobs.
Elizabeth Tang, general secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation, said that among domestic workers in Hong Kong, all those from Indonesia and 80 percent of those from the Philippines had paid recruitment agencies for their jobs.
“The moment they arrive, they are already heavily indebted, so they have to give up a lot of rights because they have to keep the job to have money to pay the recruiters,” Tang said.
Many Mexicans go to work on farms in the US through the so-called H-2A temporary visa program for agricultural workers.
Sarah Fox, the US Department of State’s special representative for international labor affairs, said the US has banned employers or their agents from seeking or receiving recruitment fees for temporary visa programs, but that such bans are difficult to enforce.
“It’s easy enough to say no recruitment fees, but these agencies can be very creative in coming up with all kinds of other sorts of charges that they don’t call recruitment fees,” Fox said.
For migrant workers, there is a “strong disincentive” to complain about illegal recruitment fees because they could lose their jobs or visas, Micah-Jones said.
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