Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

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Not all workers are treated that way, but many are. If you were working illegally in the US it sounds like you were lucky.

It's been a huge problem in Florida: https://ciw-online.org/slavery/

The same story plays out all over the place.

Here it happened in Georgia: https://apnews.com/article/business-georgia-slavery-forced-l...

Here in Colorado: https://www.denverpost.com/2024/11/01/h2a-visas-workers-traf...

It's not even just limited to farms.

These guys were kept locked up at night and only let out to build luxury condos: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/slavery-towers-feds-sa...

This Texas lady forced them to work for her cleaning company: https://kfor.com/news/texas-woman-convicted-of-forcing-two-u...

This landscaping company in Tennessee did it: https://www.foxnews.com/world/tennessee-landscaping-business...

This lady in Illinois just wanted house slaves: https://www.foxnews.com/us/mexican-migrant-trafficking-woman...

I did realize something interesting when there and it speaks to my previous point: most of the abuse was amongst the workers themselves. A lot of times a farmer/producer will hire "a guy" to do a job, one that acts as a contractor. Almost all the time they were migrants. Most times they were legal, but sometimes not. It was up to them to do the actual resourcing - the farmer/producer has no time for that. It would be that contracted resource doing most of the maltreatment/underpaying/mismanagement, and they would almost always treat the entire group badly. I was lucky in that I was there as a family member to the farmer just trying to make summer cash.

You're never going to not have some population of people with influence and resources attempt to take advantage of people without those things - that is a story that's as old as time. But statistically these that you have listed are all one-offs - that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care - but it does mean that the tone of your first post is very much over-stated.

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