The issue at hand is whether companies are hiring foreign workers, mainly Latino migrants, because they are cheaper or because there is a lack of U.S. residents available to take blue-collar jobs. Many illegal immigrants, mainly from Latin America, have been flocking to New Orleans to do cleanup work.

The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, involves an unusual move by Decatur to recruit foreign workers under a government program, known as the H-2B guest-worker program. To qualify for the program, employers must prove to the government that they cannot find U.S. residents to fill the jobs in question. The program is designed to hire foreign workers to do temporary work in nonagricultural areas, often on a seasonal basis.

Several other companies in the region have also hired foreign workers under the guest-worker scheme after winning approval from the Labor Department, according to worker-rights organizations.

About 300 foreign workers are believed to have been hired early this year by Decatur to do housekeeping, maintenance and other work at its properties, according to officials at the National Immigration Law Center, a Washington-based advocacy group involved in the case.

In the lawsuit, 82 workers from Bolivia, Peru and the Dominican Republic allege that Decatur and Mr. Quinn violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to reimburse them for fees paid to labor recruiters working as agents of the hotel chain abroad, as well as travel expenses and visa fees adding up to as much as $5,000. The lawsuit says Decatur should have made those payments in their first week of work to comply with labor law. The lawsuit further states that the company exploited the workers' indebtedness and lack of familiarity with U.S. laws to violate their legal rights.

The lawsuit also alleges that the workers' high level of personal debt stemming from their entry to the U.S. has left them in "severe debt," since they can neither make enough money to pay off their debt by working for the hotel chain nor, under the provisions of their visas, can they work for any other employer to earn additional money. The suit also states that "in recent weeks their predicament has been complicated ... by failure to offer them 40 hours of work each week."

The lawsuit against Decatur and Mr. Quinn says that the employer asserted that it couldn't find laborers "despite the fact that local U.S. workers, mostly African Americans, had previously worked in this industry in New Orleans and were available to do so."

The lawsuit seeks to represent migrant workers who moved to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and are presently employed by Decatur Hotels.