IHRB Meets with Mexican Senators for the Responsible Recruitment of Migrant Workers
22 June 2022
On March 22, IHRB's Migrant Workers Programme had its first meeting with legislative representatives from Mexico. In partnership with Periplo Project IHRB convened a roundtable for Mexican Senators to comprehend the context and the need for responsible recruitment of migrant workers in Mexico, the U.S.A and Canada. To establish a course of action for responsible recruitment, Civil Society Organisations, representatives from the U.S Department of Labour, and the Director of the ILO Office for Mexico and Cuba, participated in a dialogue with the Senators.
Pictured left to right: Top row: Jorge Aceytuno, Senior Researcher from FairSquare; Carmen Pedraza, IHRB; Patricia Mercado, Mexican Senator; Rachel Micah-Jones, Executive Director of CDM; Agnieszka Raczynska, Coordinator of the Periplo Project. Middle Row: Stephanie Bratnick, IHRB; Pedro Américo Furtado, Director of the ILO Office for Mexico and Cuba; Mary C. Ellison, U.S Department of Labour Attaché; Andrea Rojas, Strategic Initiatives Director of Labor Trafficking from Polaris; Israel Alvarado, Technical Secretary from the Labour Commission in the Mexican Senate. Bottom Row: Bertha Caraveo, Mexican Senator; Nestora Salgado García, Mexican Senator.
The participant organisations illustrated the problem in the temporary working visa scheme from the U.S, the H-2 visas, to which primary recipients are workers of Mexican origin. They exposed the misconception that regulated migration guarantees the protection of workers and sustained this fact by highlighting that from 2015 to 2020, an estimated of 90% of reported human trafficking victims in the U.S were H-2 visa holders. The organizations also presented gender discrimination within the temporary visa system and blamed it on the fact that the permits depend entirely on the employer. They stated that only 6% of H-2 recipients were women due to the notion that men would perform better as workers. In addition, 70% of women migrant workers reported harassment incidents. Meanwhile, the internal migration in Mexico also reflected significant recruitment flaws since 66% of migrant workers reported burdening a recruitment debt.
The participant organisations illustrated ...the misconception that regulated migration guarantees the protection of [migrant] workers.
Finally, they exemplified with some good practices how recruitment should work in the region to mitigate the risks for workers. They highlighted the need to map and protect migrant workers from their communities of origin to their working conditions in their destination places and emphasised why the working visas should not depend solely on the employers' needs. The organisations' representatives also accentuated the need to have a gender perspective when strengthening the laws to prevent the abuse of migrant workers.
The Mexican Senators expressed their commitment to strengthening the laws for promoting responsible recruitment in the region and voiced their will to get involved in further regional events convened by IHRB.
Watch a short video with a preview of the interventions from the participants during the meeting.
This meeting is the first from a set of events in which IHRB will convene regional stakeholders from the private and public sectors to promote responsible recruitment and the protection of migrant workers in the North American migration corridor.
If you wish to get involved with responsible recruitment efforts in the North America Region, subscribe here, or reach out to IHRB's Regional Coordinator, Stephaine Bratnick, at stephanie.bratnick@ihrb.org.
