The Slaves in Our Midst

[MountainLaurel]

About domestic workers who are brought to the U.S. after being lied to and are then enslaved by their "employers." A good corollary to yesterday's news about the Saudi princess. There's also an opportunity for Kindasleezy to close the loopholes that allow these sorts of things to happen. Anyone taking bets on whether she will act.

Last Tuesday morning, one mile north of the White House, I sat in the upstairs dining room of a Dupont Circle cafe having a cup of tea with a slave. Well actually she's now a runaway slave who's living in the Washington area home of a good Samaritan.

But yes, she could have been considered a slave, if you define that as being bound to a specific area of land, forced to work without compensation, stripped of her passport and left at the absolute disposal of a master.

She is African. However, unlike her ancestors who arrived in America on slave ships, she came here voluntarily. She was, however, deceived about her working conditions, and she began her involuntary servitude once she entered her master's suburban Maryland household.

snip

America prides itself on being among the nations that "have eliminated servitude as a state-sanctioned practice," to quote the State Department's June 2006 Trafficking in Persons Report, which documents such abuses in foreign countries. Truth is, traffickers are also at work in the nation's capital. What's worse, they couldn't get away with their abusive practices without the weak oversight of the U.S. government. Chief among the federal enablers: Condoleezza Rice's State Department.

The State Department gets fingered because so many of today's human traffickers and slavers are diplomats, flaunting U.S. and local laws, under the protective shield of the department's interpretation of diplomatic immunity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/22/AR2006122201019.html