A “Yelp” For Migrant Workers
Rachel Micah-Jones interned for Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, and then worked on the Senate campaign of Oregon’s Ron Wyden, which stoked her interest in the law. While working in the Washington, D.C., public defender’s office, she saw that immigration laws ill-served her foreign-born clients. She began to think about combining her knowledge of law with its impact on real people to craft better policy. fellows.echoinggreen.org In 2005 she formed Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, or CDM, an international nonprofit that helps migrants fight for better working conditions and shape policy in the United States and Mexico. Since its founding the group, whose headquarters sits above an eyeglass shop in Baltimore, has recovered more than $5 million in stolen wages for the workers it represents. In 2014, CDM unveiled Contratados, a system it calls "the Yelp for migrant workers" because it allows workers to rate employers and their recruiters anonymousl...