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My dissertation evaluates an international migration chain to explain the impact of the economic crisis upon the U.S. domestic labor market. My dissertation, entitled "Black Gold, Brown Labor: The Legalization of Indentured Work through the Transnational Migration Industry", asks how do employers meet labor demand during an economic downturn? Logically, with high rates of unemployment the excess of labor would enable employers to meet labor needs from within the domestic worker pool. However, despite the 2008 economic crisis there has been an increased recruitment of temporary foreign workers in post-Katrina New Orleans and across the gulf south oil industries. I find that a complex chain of business ties between U.S. oil industry contractors and Indian labor brokers sustains a supply of cheap and dependent temporary foreign workers. My findings indicate that a lawful market for migrants emerges during the economic crisis that enables exploitative labor conditions to be written into employment contracts.