Guest worker programs.

Guest-worker programs import laborers from other countries into the United States for temporary employment. Early variants of such programs included indentured servitude during the colonial period, when European immigrant workers agreed to fixed terms of labor in exchange for transportation and other costs. The recruiting of Chinese railroad workers and other forms of contract labor during the mid-nineteenth century were also forms of indentured servitude; they were eventually outlawed by the Foran Act of 1885. Another form of indentured servitude was the nineteenth century Italian padrone system, which was facilitated by labor contractors with transatlantic ties. These early forms of indentured servitude did not always require that the laborers return to their home countries at the end of their terms of service, but many indentured laborers did.