Raw Story: Human trafficking of Indian guest workers alleged in Mississippi shipyard

[BurtWorm]

A truly bleak side of globalization: the return of something like slavery:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Human_trafficking_of_Indian_guest_workers_0412.html


04/13/2007 @ 10:40 am
Filed by Lindsay Beyerstein and Larisa Alexandrovna

Paid $18.50 an hour, but living twenty to a trailer and fighting for spoons


A month ago Monday, a group of guest workers from India placed a frantic 3:00 am phone call to Saket Soni, lead organizer for the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice. The workers said that armed security guards were holding some workers prisoner in the TV room of the Signal International Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where the company's 290 welders and pipe fitters live.

The men told Soni that Signal International – a sub-contractor for mammoth defense contractor Northrop Grumman – had staged a pre-dawn raid and that six Indian workers had been detained in the “TV room,” flanked by security guards, one of whom carried a gun. About 200 other Indian employees at Signal were standing outside the room.

Signal says they detained the guest workers at the advice of US immigration officials, in an attempt to forcibly deport them following a labor dispute. Though the workers were later released into the custody of community groups, the incident has shed light on a longstanding immigration problem – the vulnerability of guest workers who travel to the United States on H-2B visas, and their exploitation at the hands of so-called “recruiters” and the companies they work for.

Indian workers Joseph Jacob and Sabu Lal believe the Mar. 9 raid was initiated as Signal’s reaction to worker complaints, while the company says the workers were fired for performance-related issues.

But the bigger story is in the details: These 290 Indians paid upwards of $15,000 each to travel to America, lured by the promises of a Mississippi sheriff’s deputy.

Deputy Michael Pol is also the president of Global Resources, Inc., a placement firm that recruits Indian workers to fill jobs in the US. Global Resources works with local recruiting firms in India to enlist talent and with U.S.-based immigration attorneys to secure visas for the workers....

[BurtWorm]

1. More on Guest Workers in the Gulf Coast

From 3Quarks Daily:

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/04/more_on_guest_w.html

DemocracyNow! also has a piece on guest workers across the Gulf Coast. It consists of interviews of Sabu Lal "one Indian guestworker who tried to commit suicide after he was fired", Nestor Vallero a "Mexican guestworker who says his Louisiana employer confiscated his passport and subjected him to humiliating conditions and treatment", and "Saket Soni, spokesman for the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity." Oddly, instead of bringing democracy to the Middle East, the administration seems to have enabled the US to import immigrant labor practices from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

NESTOR VALLERO: <translated> They had told us that they promised $10 an hour, but it turned out when we got here they would only pay us $6.50 an hour. And they threatened us, and they said, “Well, if you don't like it, you can go home.” And when we asked for our passports, they said, “Oh, you want your passport back? Well, I’m only going to give it to you if you’re going to go home.” After all of this, we were just forced to take whatever job they were offering us, because we didn’t have any money to go home or do anything else.

But that wasn't all. They started to discount the cost of our housing from our wage. And we had to pay $1,200 a month for housing. And out of a $300 check that we received for two weeks work, they would take, discount almost $200 off that check. So, they’re really, you know, raking in the profits with our work. It’s really just a money-making scheme, this whole guestworkers program.

I think it's time that we modify the laws. They need to be overhauled, because we’re not the only ones that are suffering from this. There are many, many people who are suffering this injustice. Here in New Orleans, many contractors are paying $13 or $10 an hour to do cleanup work from the Katrina disaster. However, the contractors have figured out that they can import people from other countries and pay them half that to do the cleanup work. So this is really a contradiction. And this is creating tensions, racial tensions between the African Americans who are local to New Orleans and the Latin Americans who are being imported to work here.

[Colobo]

2. Return of slavery?

That has never been gone. It's been with humans forever.

[lala_rawraw]

3. thanks for posting, apparaently Imus is more important

[BurtWorm]

5. Apparently.

Thank you for investigating and writing the story.

:toast:

[NormanYorkstein]

4. We have human trafficking every day over our southern border

but for some reason we don't do anything about it.

[Selatius]

6. That's because the corporatists who encourage it also fund politicians' campaigns.

It's basically a gigantic form of union-smashing and a way to keep non-unionized workers in-line. It's divide and conquer of the worst kind that pits workers all over the world against each other.

[SoCalDem]

7. "Guest workers".. what a gentle way to term 21st century slavery

:puke:

[BurtWorm]

8. kick

[DemReadingDU]

9. morning kick