Agents for the company, however, found plenty of willing workers in Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic. Each recruit paid between $3,500 and $5,000 to come to the United States for hotel jobs — maintenance, housekeeping, guest services, etc. — that were scheduled to last just nine months. According to the terms of the written contract, each would have to work full-time for three to four months just to recoup the recruiting fees, not counting any interest on loans they may have taken out. When they arrived, they found they were not even able to work full-time with the hotels, making their situations even more desperate.

"Every one of us has to sell things in order to have the money to come here," said Francisco Sotelo Aparicio, who came from Peru to work for Decatur Hotels. "I sold some of my land, my belongings, and we leave our families to try to come out ahead. ... We want to keep working legally, but it is very hard to do so when we make such little money and have so much debt. We become desperate."

In many cases, the only way for guestworkers to make enough money to repay their debt is to seek additional employment — but that is illegal. The guestworker system permits them to work only for the employer who arranged with the Department of Labor to import them.

Many of the workers interviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center know full well that they will be unable repay their recruiting debt because their pay is so low and the jobs are seasonal or temporary.

This raises the question: Why do workers choose to come to the United States under these terms?

The simple fact is that workers from Mexico, Guatemala and many other countries often have very few economic opportunities. In recent years, rural Mexicans have had an increasingly difficult time making a living at subsistence farming, and in some regions there are virtually no wage-paying jobs. Where jobs exist, the pay is extremely low; unskilled laborers can earn 10 times as much, or more, in the United States as they can at home. So even though they risk being cheated, many workers are willing to take that chance. Most perceive the guestworker program as their best chance to get to the United States and provide a better life for their families. These desperate workers are easily deceived by recruiters.

In a few cases, guestworkers have told the Southern Poverty Law Center, employers have simply provided a backdoor for migrant workers to get to the United States. Once here, they overstay their visas, becoming unauthorized workers, or "jump" contract by going to work elsewhere. Even though expensive, the cost to the worker commonly is less than what it would cost to enter the United States illegally. Certainly it is less dangerous to enter with an H-2 visa than to attempt to cross the border unlawfully.

Some employers seek long visa periods, claiming to have eight or 10 months of work, for example, when they actually have only two to three months of work to offer. The period after which the employer has no work to offer but when the visa is still valid is referred to by many workers as the "tiempo libre" or "free period." Numerous workers have told the Southern Poverty Law Center that their employers explicitly advised them that they were free to seek work elsewhere during this period. While that clearly violates immigration law, workers often believe themselves to be in legal status, because their visa appears valid and because they were given permission by their employer. For some employers, this is the only way they are able to continue to attract a workforce year after year, since the wages are so low and the costs of recruitment so high.

One employer sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center had extensive notes showing the deposits left by workers in order to secure their jobs. Next to one worker's name was written: "he only wants the visa to travel to Florida. He must leave a 5000 deposit." Clearly, these are visas available for sale.

As long as the guestworker system relies on a series of unregulated foreign recruiters, it is subject to this sort of wanton selling of visas.

A prohibition on charging fees to workers for recruitment or transportation would help negate the financial incentive for the recruiting industry in Mexico and elsewhere to send more workers than are needed. Presumably, if the workers could not be charged, then employers would pay for recruiting, and they would recruit only the number of workers needed.

Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine enforcing such a rule. For example, until recently, one U.S. embassy in Latin America routinely asked prospective H-2 workers how much they had paid in recruitment fees, apparently out of concern that a high level of indebtedness would cause workers to overstay their visas in order to repay the debt. Workers were told by their recruiters what the "correct" — that is, false — answer should be, and workers dutifully understated the fees that they have paid.

A fundamental problem with the guestworker system is the requirement that a worker may travel to the United States on an H-2 visa only after he has a job offer from a U.S. employer. Placing this power in the hands of employer representatives operating in other countries is a recipe for worker abuse.