CIERTO CEO Invited to Appear at Summit of the Americas Roundtable on H-2 Recruitment
CIERTO CEO Joe Martinez participated in a roundtable on H-2 migration and fair recruitment, hosted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at the ninth Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles in June.
CIERTO CEO Joe Martinez meets with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at the 9th Summit of the Americas
“We were proud to be asked to participate and pleased to be able to support the administration’s efforts to provide a fuller range of viable alternatives to irregular migration.
It was exciting to see the Federal Government, private sector actors, NGOs and non-profits all come together to discuss what needs to be done to protect migrant workers.”
The roundtable was a chance for industry stakeholders to get face time with officials from the US and Northern Triangle governments, and a forum to announce the “Guidance on Fair Recruitment Practices for Temporary Migrant Workers.”
The Guidance provides principles and guidelines on preventing the abuse of guest workers as part of a multi-agency effort to promote best practices in responsibly administering H-2 programs.
Joe meeting with USAID Administrator Susan Power
Martinez sees the release of the Guidance as progress on responsible recruiting.
“The new document is a big step in the right direction. It’s been created in accordance with the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) guiding principles, which CIERTO has built our recruitment model around. I look forward to them becoming requirements and regulations, as opposed to just guidelines.”
CIERTO was asked to participate in the event because of its history of leadership in changing the fair recruitment paradigm, including establishing a presence in Central America.
As USAID Administrator Susan Power noted, CIERTO has received a grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to expand its operations and establish the network of verification partners necessary to begin responsibly recruiting up to 20,000 H-2A workers from Guatemala.
CIERTO has recently launched the Guatemalan Workforce Initiative (GWI), a responsible recruitment program that provides a direct, bottom line benefit to growers in the form of a per-worker incentive to hire skilled, trained, ethically recruited H-2A workers from Guatemala.
We’ve successfully placed Guatemalan workers on farms in the US and are actively seeking growers and FLCs dedicated to expanding access to the H-2 program in Guatemala.