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This seems a very silly way to look at it. Say I travel to Canada, and I have a cousin there. He lets me crash on his couch because he is my cousin. We have dinner together. I offer to help with the dishes, because, after all, I'm the one who got half of them dirty so it's only fair. Am I "working" for my cousin? Is he paying me by letting me sleep on his couch? Of course not. My cousin would have let me stay over even if I'd bailed out on the washing dishes; in fact he wouldn't have needed help with the dishes if my presence hadn't gotten extra dishes dirty. Even to the extent that my track record of being a helpful houseguest might be a factor in him allowing me to stay, it's not as if he'd let a perfect stranger come to his house in exchange for that minimal amount of "housekeeping", or as if there's some citizen he would be paying normal wages for that work if I hadn't stepped up. Come on. In no universe should this be any kind of violation. It's pure chicanery.
(Or are you saying that, while the above is innocent, we need to outlaw it anyway in order to 'catch' some rampant problem of criminals who are in fact becoming unauthorized housekeepers for perfect strangers in exchange for room and board in the US? I suppose that would be less insane. But also, fuck it. Letting some people functionally enslave themselves on the margins is worth not outlawing basic politeness as a houseguest. To the extent it might be happening, I still don't believe it's a blight on the economy that warrants making regulations such a PITA for ordinary people who want to pull their weight with their hosts.)
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