Hundreds of guest workers from India are protesting conditions in a Pascagoula, Mississippi shipyard that immigrant rights activists compare to slavery. Many gathered in a church on March 11 in this Gulf Coast port, after their employer, Signal International, threatened to send some of the workers home. Signal is a large corporation that repairs and services oil drilling platforms in the Gulf.

According to Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, "they were hired in India by a labor recruiter sent by Signal. They had to pay exorbitant amounts to the company, to the recruiter and to the attorney who did the labor certification for them."

Signal brought about 300 workers from India in December to work in its Mississippi yard, and another group to work in two yards in Texas. The workers are part of the H2B visa program, in which the US government allows companies to recruit workers outside the country, and bring them here under contract. The visas are good for ten months, but the company can renew them for those it wants to keep longer. The workers must remain employed. If they lose their jobs, they must go home.

Workers say they were promised jobs as welders and fitters, and had to pay as much as $20,000 each to the recruiting contractor, Global Industry, Signal's caterer. Workers also say they were promised that Signal would refund the money.

"I had to pay $14,000," said one of those workers, Joseph Jacob. "I worked for years in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, and I spent all the money I had to get the visa, which the recruiter promised would be a permanent residence visa. But that visa never came, and finally he said they could get us a H2B visa. That would give us ten months of work, and if the company renewed it, we might get as much as 30 months. I thought that was the only way I'd ever be able to get back the money they'd taken."

Signal CEO Dick Marler said the company sent observers to oversee recruitment and testing in India, but that they were unaware of how much workers were paying for visas. "We weren't in that part of the loop," he said, "but the workers paid that money with their eyes wide open, and our recruiters tell us that's perfectly normal for people in India."

Signal put the Indian guest workers to work in the yard alongside US workers doing the same job - welding and fitting. The company claims it pays workers from India the same wages as domestic employees. The guest workers say they were promised $18 an hour, but many were paid only half that, after the company said they were unqualified. Marler explained some workers were reclassified from first to second class welders, and their wages reduced.

Out of their wages, workers pay an additional $35 per day to stay in a labor camp Signal set up inside the yard. "The conditions are very bad here for the H2B workers," Joseph said bitterly. "Twenty-four of us live in a small room in a barracks that measures 12 feet by 18 feet, sleeping on bunk beds. There are two toilets for all of us and only four sinks. We have to get up at 3:30 in the morning, just so all of us have time to use the bathroom before going to work."

A month ago, the Indian guest workers began meeting in a local church to discuss how they might get the company to refund the huge sums they paid to come to the U.S., and to protest the bad conditions. They organized a group, Signal H2B Workers United. It was after the company found out, they say, that it accused workers of being unqualified for their jobs and cut their pay.

Six were told they were completely incapable, and Signal announced it was sending them back to India immediately. Marler said he was willing to keep the unskilled workers on "fire watch," but that his lawyers said the company had to send them back. "The unskilled workers tried to game the system, and lied about their skills," he alleged. Joseph was fired. "I am now terminated because I attended the meeting," he said. "That's what the company vice-president told me."

Marler said the incident didn't happen "to my knowledge." Joseph, however, remains fired.

When the company announced the terminations, one worker disappeared. Another, Sabu Lal, slashed his wrists and was taken to the Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula. He told the Mississippi Press that dying would be better than being sent home. "Lal and I are from the same place in India," Joseph explained. "I knew he had sold his home, and had no place to return to. He was only able to make back a small part of the thousands of dollars he paid to the recruiter, and he said he couldn't go home like that."

Company security guards locked the fired workers in what they call the TV Room, and wouldn't let them leave. Their coworkers contacted the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, which went to the Pascagoula Police Department. The police went out to the yard and eventually freed the imprisoned workers. Outside the yard, dozens of workers and activists denounced the firings and mistreatment.

"We've learned about case after case of workers in Mississippi, Louisiana and all along the gulf in these conditions," Chandler said. "There are thousands of guest workers who have been brought in since Katrina, and subjected to this same treatment. Mexican guest workers in Amelia, Louisiana, were held in the same way. They also got organized, and came to Pascagoula to support the workers here when they heard what happened."

Chandler says the experience of these workers highlights the problems inherent in proposals introduced into Congress over the last two years, which would set up similar schemes for the importation of as many as 400,000 guest workers per year. "Organizations that are fighting for the rights of workers and advocating on behalf of workers should be totally opposed to these kind of programs," he declared. "The conditions that people work in here are so exploitative they're worse than the conditions even for undocumented workers."