Guest Workers

The term guest worker is most commonly associated with its German translation, Gastarbeiter, a community of mainly Turkish migrants brought in after World War II to help rebuild German infrastructure. Gastarbeiter were intended to remain in Germany on a temporary basis for work purposes, but many remained and now constitute a large ethnic group within the country. In addition to Turkish migrants, sizable numbers of guest workers came from Spain and Yugoslavia and were employed across Western Europe. Recruitment began as early as 1955 after the first agreement between the Italian and West German governments. Similar agreements with Greece and Spain (1960), Turkey (1961), Morocco (1963), Portugal (1964), Tunisia (1965), and Yugoslavia (1968) followed. To facilitate recruitment the German government opened agencies in these countries that mediated between those looking for work and their future employers. In contrast to immigrants, guest workers were given a temporary right of residence in a state until they have completed the period of work for which they were given leave to stay. Most of these migrants were men usually seeking work in Germany until they had saved enough to secure a comfortable living back home or so that they could support their families and fend for themselves once they had returned. Many of them left wives and children behind, and most left their home countries with the intention of returning after a few years of work abroad. Guest workers also existed in sizable numbers beyond Europe, for example, a large Korean community of guest workers existed in Japan.

In the United States, guest-worker programs have been developed to match immigrant workers to specified gaps in the labor market; this has particularly been the case in the agricultural sector. The H-2A program, for example, enables employers to import agricultural workers, while in recent years H-1B visas have been increased to allow recruitment of skilled workers. Many migrant workers have continued to work illegally in the United States, in particular, those who have entered the country from Mexico. In recent years, this has been a contentious issue for U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, with pressure mounting from those who seek to protect illegal workers by offering guest worker status and those seeking to protect U.S. jobs, especially in the agricultural sector. In his 2004 State of the Union address, Bush asked Congress for support for a temporary worker program which matches foreign workers with U.S. employers and which would provide illegal Mexican workers with temporary legal status and some civil rights protection.

Guest workers have historically been granted temporary residence to fill particular gaps in the labor market in a state. This has been in response to large-scale reconstruction programs or to growing demands of one particular sector of the economy such as agriculture or information technology. Many of these guest workers, however, have claimed permanent residence in the host country and now form long-established communities.