For many of us, summer fairs hold happy memories of riding the carousel and bumper cars and eating corn dogs, funnel cakes and cotton candy. But for the people who operate the rides and work the concession stands, the experience may be far from happy.
As founder and executive director of Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), I’ve worked with migrant workers across industries and visa categories who face wage theft, discrimination, unsafe working conditions and human trafficking. The industry where I’ve seen the most pervasive abuse is — by far — the fair and carnival industry.
Through CDM’s work, we’ve spoken with hundreds of migrant workers in the fair and carnival industry and have represented many in federal lawsuits challenging abuses.
Their stories follow a cruel pattern: Recruited in some of Mexico’s most under-resourced communities and forced to pay illegal recruitment fees, they arrive in the United States with employer-driven debt. Many workers describe 18-hour shifts assembling and operating rides without training or protective gear. For pay they get a lump-sum weekly wage — no matter the number of hours worked — sometimes less than a few dollars an hour.
Though the H-2B visa used to recruit them offers some worker protections, they tie workers to their employer, which makes leaving abusive working conditions difficult. Workers often face the impossible choice of either withstanding abuse or losing their income, their immigration status and returning home to an unpayable debt.
In 2013, CDM and the American University Washington College of Law Immigrant Justice Clinic documented these abusive working conditions in “Taken for a Ride,” a report that shines a light on the inhumane working conditions faced by migrant guestworkers in the fair and carnival industry.
Conditions for workers today are little better than when we published the report more than 10 years ago. Part of the reason these abuses continue is that carnivals and fairs don’t stay in the same place for long, which makes it difficult for state and local government agencies to monitor and address abuses. And the fair and carnival industry has powerful lobbyists that have fought every effort to make working conditions fair.
Now the fair and carnival industry has once again activated its impressive lobbying machine to move fair and carnival migrant workers out of the H-2B program and into the P visa, a less worker-protective visa category intended for outstanding athletes, performers and entertainers and minimally regulated by the Department of Labor.
Two bills are moving through the U.S. House and the Senate with this nefarious purpose: the H.R. 1787 Carnivals Are Real Entertainment Act, introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., which now boasts 60 co-sponsors, and the S. 4040 RIDE Act introduced by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
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The Outdoor Amusement Business Association, a national trade association that represents amusement operators, claims that using the P visa category will allow fair and carnivals to recruit more workers in order to operate at full capacity amid a labor shortage in the United States. But this move will undoubtedly increase fair workers’ vulnerability by removing the minimal guardrails embedded in the H-2B visa program. This is too high a price to pay.
Long working hours, wage theft, unsafe working conditions and trafficking are already too common in the fair and carnival industry. Without the few protections afforded by the H-2B program, more and more fair workers will fall prey to low-road employers who, taking advantage of reduced government supervision and fewer regulations, will seek to exploit migrant workers and erode working conditions for all workers.
Rachel Micah-Jones is founder and executive director of Centro de los Derechos del Migrante Inc., the first transnational workers’ rights organization based in Mexico and the United States.
