WASHINGTON -- Congress ought to examine and end existing abuses in U.S. guest worker programs before it starts a new one for illegal immigrants, a civil rights group said Monday.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., said foreigners hired through programs for farm and non-farm laborers work in conditions akin to indentured servitude.

Discrimination based on national origin, race, age, disability and gender is deeply entrenched in the H-2 guest-worker system, the report said.

Because they are bound to a single employer and don't have access to legal resources, guest workers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage and temporary jobs, held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents, forced to live in squalid conditions and denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries, the report said.

"The title of the report 'Close to Slavery' is an accurate depiction of guest-worker programs in the United States. It is not mere hyperbole," Richard Cohen, the center's chief executive officer, said at a National Press Club news conference.

Many of the workers are hired by recruiters in Mexico, Guatemala and other parts of Latin America, where President George W. Bush has been visiting and promoting proposed immigration reform.

Bush, as well as Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., and Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., have proposed a new guest-worker program to provide laborers for U.S. employers and curb illegal immigration.

The center recommends workers be allowed to become legal permanent residents, with their families, over time. That proposal has been backed by some supporters of immigration changes but is opposed by some conservatives.