But as an ABC News investigative report in the 1950s revealed, he had become a very rich one in part by importing “cheap labor from the Caribbean” to work his land, despite “considerable local unemployment.” One federal official depicted aspects of the program “at worst as a modern counterpart to the slave trade, [and] at best as a system of indentured servants.” With no rights in America, the guest workers could be paid “$60 or less for a 60-hour week”—with transportation and other expenses deducted from their wages. Those from the Bahamas, like Senator Byrd’s workers, “suffer the worst
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