Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If the basic idea is to let small businesses have the same access to immigrant labor as larger, sophisticated businesses, and to let more people have access to immigrant labor of different sorts in the way that some affluent people have access to au pairs, sounds good. Obviously you'd want to make sure that immigrants don't get exploited by their employer, but legal immigration is much, much better that way than illegal immigration is.
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The idea here is to let an individual have an "opportunity" to have a captive laborer, someone whose visa depends on their work relationship, who will owe costs if terminated by their employer, whose living space is controlled by the employer, and who is exempt from the most basic worker protection, minimum wage. This is all about creating an institutional framework for exploitation.
The au pair program is a one year sojourn. There is exploitation in the program - we used it for several years and saw some horrid things happne among some of our au pairs' friends (including one family who very strictly limited their au pair's food, for example, and more than one case where there was sexual harassment). The program needs reform, not expansion, but is also a very temporary status.
