In a letter to U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) today, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) urged the senator to seek reform of the H-2 guest worker program used to import workers who claim in a new SPLC lawsuit that they were abused by a prominent employer in Graham’s state.

Byhis own account, Graham helped the luxury Kiawah Island Golf Resort near Charleston obtain a U.S. Department of Labor waiver to bring in Jamaican guest workers in advance of the 2012 PGA Championship. He also has used the resort for fundraising events.

The SPLCfiled suit last weekto seek relief for the resort’s guest workers, whose wages were pushed below the minimum requirement by various fees and charges they were forced to pay.

“Frankly, the possibility that impoverished, black Jamaican workers are being cheated out of their already-low wages while serving wealthy, elite vacationers at an exclusive, Deep South resort should trouble South Carolinians,” SPLC President Richard Cohen wrote in the letter. “It conjures images of the state’s darkest past, a time when plantation labor was the norm.”

Given his role in helping the resort obtain guest workers, Cohen urged Graham to insist that the resort remedy any labor injustices that have occurred there; refrain from holding political events at the resort until the dispute is resolved; and to seek congressional reform of the H-2 program.

The SPLC will be asking a federal court for class action status for the lawsuit, allowing it to seek relief for more than 500 Jamaicans who have worked as cooks, kitchen helpers, dishwashers, housekeepers, bell persons and cabana attendants at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort over the past three years.

“Plantation labor is a thing of the past – and that is where it should stay,” Cohen said. “Given our nation’s history, we have a special obligation to ensure that H-2 guest workers who come to our shores are treated fairly. They should be entitled to the same rights, wages and working conditions as U.S. workers.”

The SPLC has documented widespread abuses in the H-2 program in its report Close to Slavery: Guest Worker Programs in the United States Under the program, which is regulated by the DOL, U.S. employers bring in tens of thousands of temporary workers for low-skill jobs each year.