For people like Sandra it’s a chance to get on in life, and to help her family by sending back some of the money she earns. In Guatemala there are now around 30 recruitment companies that are registered with the Guatemalan government to help people find temporary work in the US via H-2A visas.
It’s a cold, grey, windy day in southern Guatemala as Sanda proudly shows off the plot of land she rents in a place called Las Tres Cruces, high up in the hills near a town where she lives with her family, called Santiago Sacatepéquez.
She and her relatives grow corn, lettuce, beans and spinach for them to eat. And if there’s enough left over they sell them at the local market. Sandra’s dream is to save enough money to buy some land, so they don’t have to rent.
But first she needs to pay off the rest of the debt that she got herself in to after being scammed when she and her sister first tried to get a visa for the United States.
“We paid someone $2,000 per person because we wanted to get work in the US,” she says. “My sister and I thought we needed to do this so we could move forward and make our dreams come true. So, we got a loan to get the money, but sadly it was all a scam, and they took our money.”
This is common practice for fraudsters in Guatemala, who play with people’s desperation to get to the US, and trick them into handing over money.
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