The recruitment mechanism in Spaish and U.S. guest worker programs: preventing fraud and abuse in worker selection and hiring

Abstract

Fraudulent recruitment of authorized, temporary “guest workers” is a growing concern among international policy makers. Recruitment in many countries is regulated through a combination of immigration, criminal, and administrative laws. This paper will compare how two countries, Spain and the United States, regulate the recruitment of agricultural and low-skilled guest workers, a population generally vulnerable to fraud, based on a review of each country’s laws and relevant literature. The conclusion is that both countries could benefit from a unified national plan to combat this problem, and that the United States in particular could draw inspiration from Spain’s collaboration with several of its top migrant-sending countries. Spain’s present-day model mirrors in some respects prior U.S. successes in recruitment policy.