Dear Editor,

The State Department J-1 program should not be used to bring temporary workers from foreign countries to work in Alaska canneries as advocated by Senator Murkowski. (J-1 Visa extension? Ketchikan Daily News, July 11-12, 2015.)

This widely discredited program that each summer under the guise of cultural exchange brings over 350,000 foreign students to the U.S. to work is nothing but a thinly disguised temporary worker program that displaces American workers, immigrant and U.S. citizen alike.

I spent the last fifteen of my 35-year career in the United States Immigration Service enforcing immigration laws in Southeast. When I arrived in Ketchikan, foreign students holding tourist visas took a sizable percentage of cannery jobs. In 1987 the practice was stopped and cannery wages rose from $4.35 to $6 an hour.

Continue reading →