http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=247

This is an extremely interesting report.

It is rather long but definitely worth reading and very enlightening.

Slavery is a live and well in the USA. Over the years I have heard many complain about workers coming into the country and taking jobs away from Americans and what they didn’t know is covered in this report. What the workers didn’t know could cost them everything they own. Of course the workers have no idea what they are in for if they decide to go to the USA to work. They are taken for the ride of a life time by recruiters and the people they end up working for. They are lied to, cheated and threatened.

In his 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for legislation creating a "legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis." Doing so, the president said, would mean "they won't have to try to sneak in." Such a program has been central to Bush's past immigration reform proposals. Similarly, recent congressional proposals have included provisions that would bring potentially millions of new "guest" workers to the United States.

What Bush did not say was that the United States already has a guestworker program for unskilled laborers — one that is largely hidden from view because the workers are typically socially and geographically isolated. Before we expand this system in the name of immigration reform, we should carefully examine how it operates.

This 48 page report covers a lot of ways workers are abused.

routinely cheated out of wages;

forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;

held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;

forced to live in squalid conditions;

denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.

http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=247

There are also other issues not covered in this report I have also read about over the years. A couple I remember off the top of my head is how farm workers being exposed to Pesticides and Herbicides. Many became extremely ill and many died. NO GRAPES  comes to mind.  http://seas.stanford.edu/diso/articles/nograpes.html or NO GRAPES BUT WHAT ABOUT  STRAWBERRIES http://diso.stanford.edu/diso/articles/strawberries.html

But of course that is another story all of its own. The affects of chemicals used on these farms can be devastating and they still use numerous ones that are unfriendly to the environment and have appalling affects on the workers.

Atrazine Pesticide It's not easy being a frog! 

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/programs/science/pesticides/media/Harpers-on-atrazine-8-25-06.pdf

Evidence of political interference The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science Run your mouse over the  boxes and if you find something your interested in just click on it.

ttp://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html