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visa holders. (See Table 1.1.) Of those 3,663 persons, 72 were H-2A visa holders, 361 were H-1B visa holders, and 3,230 were H-2B visa holders (these are the lowest estimates of the potential victims in the alleged Gulf Coast cases). 5 U.S. companies or their agents recruited most of these workers. This is not uncommon practice. U.S. companies often use guestworker visas to recruit low-skilled foreign workers. In 2005 alone, employers brought in 121,000 guestworkers under the H-2 program (Bauer, 2007, p. 1; U.S. House of Representatives, 2008). What stands out in the data we collected are the high number of alleged trafficked persons in the Gulf Coast who were H-2B visa holders, who, as we have seen, are particularly vulnerable to employer exploitation and abuse.
    In 2005, the year the Gulf Coast region was devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, no government agency claimed ownership of the H-2B program. The Department of Labor stated they had little to no authority to act on behalf of H-2B visa holders. Although statutes existed to protect H-2A visa holders, there was no similar protection for nonagricultural guestworkers. The H-2A program grants workers free housing, access to legal services, employment for at least three-fourths of the total hours promised in his or her contract (this is called the “three-quarters guarantee”), compensation for medical costs and permanent injury, as well as various other benefits (U.S. House of Representatives, 2007). In contrast, wage protection provided to H-2B visa holders was skeletal at best. Employers utilizing the H-2B program were obligated to offer full-time employment that at minimum paid the prevailing wage rate, but because the H-2B visa was established via a 1994 Department of Labor administrative directive instead of through statutory regulation, the Department of Labor claimed to lack the legal authority to enforce its requirements (U.S. Department of Labor, 1994; U.S. House of Representatives, 2007).
    Congress exacerbated the problem when in 2005 it vested the Department of Homeland Security with enforcement authority over the H-2B visa program. As a result, the Department of Labor had no authority to enforce the provisions and regulations of the program. According to Kucinich, the Department of Labor had the authority to grant or deny certification for a foreign labor contract through its Office of Foreign Labor Certification, but it could not deny certification for an employer who had been prosecuted for labor law violations. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security was granted complete authority over the enforcement of H-2B contract terms. Irrespective of the statutory limitations impeding the Department of Labor’s advocacy on behalf of H-2B workers, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division still had the authority and the responsibility to prosecute employers for violations of the Federal Labor Standards Act and the Davis-Bacon Act (U.S. House of Representatives, 2007).
    TABLE 1.1
    Alleged Gulf Coast Forced-Labor Trafficking Cases

    a Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000.
    b Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (1970).
    c Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
    d Thirty-seven persons were brought from Mexico to work at Bimbo’s in 2005/2006, approximately 39 in 2006/2007, and approximately 42 in 2007/2008. It is unknowr how many of the workers came back annually.
    e U.S. Department of State, 2009c.
    Sources:
Interviews and correspondence with Mary Bauer, Lori Johnson, Jacob Horwitz, Dan Werner, Stacie Jonas, Robert Anthony Alvarez, and Dan McNeil.
    Fortunately, in late 2008, discussions between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor resulted in an agreement that the Department of Labor should be delegated H-2B enforcement authority. Numerous amendments to the Department of Labor regulations updated the procedures for issuing labor certification to employers sponsoring H-2B guestworkers (U.S.