Yelp-Style App Saves Migrant Workers from Slavery Alisa Tang - Thomson Reuters Foundation
go to original September 4, 2015

Contratados: A 'Yelp' for Migrant Workers (cdmigrante)

A Mexican migrant paid a recruiter thousands of dollars for work in the US, only to endure slavery, time in jail and finally deportation.

To make sure others did not fall prey to the same man, the migrant wrote a review of the recruiter on Contratados.org, a site for migrants from Mexico working in the US.

The site, which means "hired" in Spanish, is described by the founding labor rights group as a Yelp or TripAdvisor for migrant workers, many of whom pay large fees to recruitment agencies but are then trapped in abusive employment - exploited, unpaid and in debt.

"This man tricked me... I had to work without pay for 2 months," the Mexican worker wrote in an anonymous posting on the site.

"He promised me a tourist visa and finally he gave me a false visa stuck on my passport for which he charged me 35,000 pesos ($2,000). At the border, I was detained and I was put in jail. I was in jail for three days and after that I was deported."



CDM has rolled out a website and smartphone app that intend to operate as a sort of Yelp for migrant workers, called Contratados.org.

Rachel Micah-Jones of the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), the Center for Migrant Rights, for workers in Mexico and the US, which launched Contratados in September last year, said the site lets migrant workers rate their experience of recruiters or employers online, by voicemail or by text message.

Last year more than 130,000 Mexicans received temporary employment visas to work in the US, and she said she hoped the site would help workers avoid being duped, exploited or charged illegal recruitment fees.

Read the rest at TradeArabia

Related: A 21st-Century Migrant’s Essentials: Food, Shelter - and a Smartphone (The New York Times)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!