Guest worker program: Are we treating them like guests?

We've discovered workers who say they're being exploited on some local farms. They're part of a Federal program called the "guest worker" program. But some workers say we're certainly not treating them like guests. Critics say we invite them here, mistreat them, and don't let them come back if they complain.

We're taking you from local farms all the way to central Mexico to uncover the guest worker controversy.

Adrian Robles is a 51-year-old farmer. This year, he decided to come to North Carolina with a temporary visa called an H-2A visa that guarantees him work.

"Everybody has a dream to come here and work in the US," says Robles.

But, he says it didn't work out as promised. He says when he arrived there was no work and no money.

"We got here and we waited, a week went by, another week," says Robles. He continues, "Until about a month and a half passed and we were desperate."

Robles could not go to work anywhere else. Federal law says under the guest worker program he can only work for the farmer who brought him to North Carolina. And, a farm worker advocate says Robles was living in a broken down house with rats and roaches, not enough beds for the workers and no drinking water.

"The employer holds all the cards. The employer controls the decision of whether the worker gets to come in the first place, whether the worker gets to stay," says Mary Bauer. She's a lawyer at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama.

"We hear the same complaints from workers all over the United States," says Bauer.

She wrote a report "Close to Slavery" claiming abuses in the guest worker program.

"In practice, the guest worker programs are much closer to slavery, than any of us I think would like," says Bauer.

Leticia Zavala has a photo album showing deplorable living conditions she says she's discovered on North Carolina farms.

"I think that they do it to take away our dignity," says Zavala.

These places are supposed to pass state inspection but in these pictures the houses look filthy and like they're falling apart. Zavala says in some cases they don't have electricity or drinking water.

"There's times when I'm like, oh man, this is just how it's always going to be, hopeless," says Zavala. She's with FLOC, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Wayne County. It's a union representing guest workers.

"You have our sweat on your fruit, you have our blood sometimes, we share that with you and people don't see it," says Zavala.

Eyewitness News traveled to Mexico to a place called Ciudad Victoria, where people have dreams of a better life and where recruiters promise those dreams can come true in the fields of North Carolina.

But right now, Lorena Gonzalez says she's dealing with broken promises. She says her husband Hector didn't get the work he was guaranteed under the guest worker program.

She says Hector had no work for three months -- because of the North Carolina drought and he's returning to Mexico with far less money to support his wife and three children.

In Mexico, we also discovered that workers say farmers keep a list preventing them from returning to North Carolina.

"They say good job, good job, everyday and then the one day you get sick they want you to go back to Mexico," says Meliton Hernandez. He says he got something called "green tobacco sickness" last year while working on a farm in Harnett County. He says he was vomiting, dehydrated and couldn't move his hands. Hernandez says the farmer wouldn't let him see a doctor and told him to pay for himself to get back to Mexico. Then, this year, Hernandez was told he could not return to North Carolina.

He challenged that but an arbitration panel ruled he did not adequately document his medical condition.

At its office in Mexico, FLOC says there are hundreds of people on a list who were not allowed to return to North Carolina this year. FLOC claims many of them should not be on the list. The workers call it a "lista negra" or in English, a blacklist.

"Workers who complain, workers who get injured, workers who assert their rights, those workers don't come back," says Mary Bauer

The North Carolina Growers Association adamantly denies there's a blacklist. They point out all guest workers who come to North Carolina work under a collective bargaining agreement between the growers and FLOC.

That agreement spells out the terms under which a worker is ineligible to return to work for the NCGA and consequently ends-up on a list that prevents them from being rehired.

However, the union can challenge the growers when workers wind-up on the list.

The Southern Poverty Law Center's Mary Bauer also says nationally she found workers are getting cheated on their paycheck.

"Chronic wage theft is a part of the program," says Bauer. She continues, "And it's because there are these kind of elaborate systems to cheat workers."

Leticia Zavala, who's fighting everyday for people working in the fields, wants us to ask if this is the way we want our food to get from the farm to the dinner table.

"Hopefully it will open some eyes and more people will start appreciating, and we won't be in the shadows no more," says Zavala.

We told the NCGA about our findings. They did not want to do an on camera interview but association president Stan Eury told us everything they do is monitored by the union and contains checks and balances to limit abuses of guest workers.

Many of our leaders in Washington D.C. think the guest worker program is the answer to the illegal immigration problem. But, people like Mary Bauer want congress to look carefully at the program -- before expanding it.