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(Trends Wide) — Some 13,000 Mexican migrant workers are owed $6.5 million in unpaid wages, reported a tweet from the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, announcing a joint effort with Mexico to locate and compensate those workers.
“This program will return millions of dollars in back wages to Mexican citizens who participated in the United States temporary foreign worker programs,” tweeted Ken Salazar, US ambassador to Mexico, this Tuesday.
The Mexican Ministry and the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs are launching the H-2A Workers Wage Recovery Program to ensure workers can collect their compensation, Salazar added.
Skilled foreign farm workers are the backbone of US agriculture and are often in the country on seasonal H-2A visas. It is not clear whose employees these workers were when they did not receive their full salaries, nor in what years they were employed.
The money owed to these thousands of workers was recovered by the US Department of Labor after it was unable to locate the people to deliver their checks, according to a press release from the Mexican Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare.
The association will try to locate migrant workers who are believed to have “received less than the legally established wage from their employers in the United States,” according to a press release from Mexico’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare.
The US is expected to send Mexico a list of workers who are “owed wages and overtime.” Mexico will then look up the workers in government databases and inform them about their checks.
“Together we watch over labor rights”, tweeted this Tuesday Luisa Alcalde, Minister of Labor and Social Welfare of Mexico.
