Thai slaves in US

BREAKING NEWS - BANGKOK POST

Thai slaves get $1 mln, US green card aid

Los Angeles (Agencies)
A steel firm which allegedly forced 48 Thai welders to become slaves will pay one million dollars compensation, US authorities said - about 36 million baht.

Under the terms of the settlement, Trans Bay Steel Inc has ageed to pay compensation for the workers. It will also provide further work on the San Francisco Bay Bridge project, housing, tuition and sponsorship for a green card to continue work and stay in the United States.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said in a statement it had reached a settlement with Trans Bay Steel Inc, which agreed to pay compensation to the workers, who were brought to the US in 2002.

The EEOC alleged the Thais were held against their will, had their passports confiscated, their movements restricted and were forced to work without pay. Several of the workers were also housed in cramped apartments without electricity, water or gas after being forced into other industries by recruitment companies contracted by Trans Bay.

"The workers in this case sought out the American dream, but instead faced a nightmare," Anna Park, a laywer at the EEOC's Los Angeles District Office, said in a statement.

"The issues of human trafficking and slavery are an enforcement priority for the Commission," she added.

The statement said 17 of the workers were told that if they tried to leave the location where they were being held, police and immigration officials would be called to arrest them.

The statement said Trans Bay hired the workers after receiving a sub-contract to provide services to retrofit the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, nothern California.

Two separate recruiting companies, Kota Manpower Co and Hi Cap Enterprises were then hired to bring the workers from Thailand.

However only nine of the welders were sent to work Trans Bay -- the rest were sent to Los Angeles and Long Beach and forced to work without pay at Thai restaurants owned by Kota Manpower and Hi-Cap, or other menial unpaid jobs.

Park said the plight of the workers came to light after several of them escaped from their staff quarters and sought refuge in a Buddhist temple.

Several of the workers have since returned to Thailand while others will continue to work with Trans Bay.

"A couple of the workers escaped at night and sought refuge in a Thai temple in Los Angeles. They were being chased down the street," Park told the AFP news agency. "It was just a horrible human story."

Just a fine? They should have closed the bastards down!

As of March 1998, through legislation signed by Bill Clinton, victims of human trafficking discovered in the U.S., can become immediately eligible for permanent residence. Prior to this time, cases such as the 72 Thai nationals in the case of Bureerong vs. Uvawas (Los Angeles - August 1995) and the 7 Thai women in the People of the United States vs. Thuc Van Do and Kalaya Delatre (Westminster - not far from the original Disneyland - January 1996), were bound over for 6 months to serve as Material Witnesses and then subject to deportation. The 72 in the first mentioned case were enslaved garment workers who finally obtained Green Cards in late 2002. One of the 72 returned to Thailand to marry an elderly German without receiving permanent residence. She and her husband now live in Central Thailand. The women in the later case were trafficked and enslaved sex workers who did not receive the same consideration only based on the nature of the work to which they were endentured. However, the federal courts advised following the trial of Thuc and Kalaya that they simply disappear into the large undocumented population of the Greater Los Angeles region and avoid contact with law enforcement. All of these women returned to sex work eventually in the traveling brothel format. One has recently returned to Northern Thailand while the others remain in the the U.S.

Nearly all trafficked Thais in the U.S., based on the numerous documented cases to date, are from a narrow range of provinces in Isaan and Lanna.

The number of enslaved trafficked persons in Southern California ranges up to 300,000 and worldwide upwards of 30 million. Parenthetically, this includes American children who used to be pictured on milk cartons, and white American women trafficked to Brunei, Kuwait, U.A.E., abd Japan as sex slaves. Many male children from Pakistan are trafficked to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East to serve as camel jockeys and general servants; Brahmin males from India traffick lower caste women from their homeland to England and elsewhere in Europe, under the guise of marriage, to serve as slaves for their patrilineages. The King of Belgium was the force behind the first law by a modern state (Belgium) to criminalize and seriously investigate human trafficking (as a result of Filipinas trafficked to Belgium being able to contact his staff directly).

In many of the cases filed in U.S. Federal Courts, the Grace Hotel in Bangkok - which can be seen from the front steps of the Landmark Hotel, is named as an assembly point for Thai, Russian, Latvian and others scheduled for trafficking.

The El Monte garment worker case in 1995 stunned and opened the eyes of so many people that new laws were inevitable. The convicted trafficker Sunee Manasurangkul and several of her sons and duaghters-in-laws (one of Chonburi Province's fine, fine families) were deported after short times in prison. One son escaped capture, returned to Thailand and went to the farm villages of the victims and threatened to kill their families if the women and men testified against his mother. This fact became the primary argument in the U.S. for granting immediate permanent residence.

[dab69]

Just a fine? They should have closed the bastards down!

no prison sentence for slavery?

[Dboy]

One only has to walk up William Street ,Kings Cross tonight to see Thai Ladyboys standing on the corners with there pimps standing near them.Nearly every brothel here in Sydney has Thai girls.
Dont ask me how they get a work visa. This shit country of Australia is a fuckin disgrace.
How can a brothel in Surry Hills,Sydney be called THAICITY GIRLS?
Maybe theres a special working visa for prostitutes?



Here's an idea. You could move to London and improve the quality of both locations.

Thai workers get money, visas in LA human trafficking settlement
- By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer


A group of Thais brought to the United States by a suspected labor trafficker accused of forcing them to live in squalor while working for little or no pay will be compensated $1 million under a consent decree reached between the federal government and a Northern California steel company.

"No amount of money can compensate for what we have today, which is our freedom, our family and justice," said one worker, Sathaporn Pornsrisirisak, at a press conference. "Although I have seen the worst of America, I have also seen the best that this country has to offer, such as laws that can bring about justice for people who are so powerless and exploited that you can't imagine exists."

Details of the settlement were announced Friday at a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. Most of the Thai nationals will receive up to $7,500 as part of the deal, according to Chancee Martorell, executive director of the Thai Community Development Center, which reported the alleged abuse.

The discrimination case was investigated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of 48 Thais who were subjected to human trafficking and slavery, authorities said.

"These workers were forced to live in cramped apartments without water, electricity or gas," said Anna Park, an attorney with the commission. "They were constantly threatened with arrest, and any attempts to escape they were told that the police and immigration would come and take them away."

A total of 49 Thai nationals were hired by Yoo Taik Kim, who ran a recruiting company with offices in Los Angeles and Thailand.

Trans Bay Steel Corp. of Napa, Calif. tapped Kim to find 10 welders to work on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge retrofit. The Thai workers paid as much as $15,000 to the recruiting company. Kim brought them to the United States in December 2002 but he took away their passports, authorities said.

"Mr. Kim recruited these workers and made all these false promises for things that never materialized," Martorell said. "They lived in horrible conditions and worked for hardly nothing."

Authorities said they are still looking for Kim, who also has a business in San Jose. A man who identified himself as Kim called The Associated Press on Friday and said he had never been contacted by authorities. He said he only learned of the accusations through an article in the Korean press after returning to California from a recent trip.

"I didn't do anything wrong," he said, adding that he did not receive any money from Trans Bay.

Kim's attorney, Dan Marmalefsky, said Kim was helping out an acquaintance at Trans Bay who asked him to use his contacts with the Thai government to find some qualified welders.

"When Trans Bay didn't follow through on its commitments, Mr. Kim on his personal expense offered the workers free housing, provided them with food and brought them to the Thai Embassy to help them," he said. "He tried to do a good deed and this is his reward I guess."

Authorities said the other alleged victims worked in two Thai restaurants owned by Kim in Los Angeles and Long Beach. The restaurant workers were kept in safe houses where they slept on floors and were given scraps of food, Martorell said. Some of them were paid about $200 over three months, despite working seven days a week, 10 hours a day, she said.

It wasn't until one of them escaped and went to the Thai community center that an investigation was launched. The two restaurants were later closed and one of the Thai nationals has returned home.

As part of the settlement, Trans Bay agreed to provide housing to the Thais as well as pay for tuition and books at a college for training to become welders. The company, which makes hinge pipe beams, also have given full-time jobs to some of the workers and paid $64,000 in back pay to eight of them.

Others have received visas to remain in the U.S. or have immigration applications pending.

Trans Bay "felt it should step up and do what it could to make the situation right," said attorney Doug Smith, who estimates the company has paid more than $500,000 in the case.

The real culprit, Smith contends, is Kim, who he alleges was paid by Trans Bay. Smith claimed the workers hired by Trans Bay were supposed to be paid about $18.80 an hour by Kim, but it turned out they were given only $6.75.

Trans Bay broke its contract with Kim in mid-2003, Smith said.

"The company got completely swindled," he said. "It perceives itself as a victim of fraud by someone who turned out to be a labor trafficker."

Thais urged to work legally

The Nation

"Nine out of 10 Thai nationals living in Los Angeles work there illegally or secure jobs without going through proper formalities, a senior Employment Department official said yesterday. Overseas Employment Administration director Suphat Kukhun warned those looking to work in the United States to follow job-placement requirements and to not work in the US illegally. He said the number of people duped by dishonest job-placement companies had fallen since a department campaign against illicit practices. The department offered training for labourers seeking overseas employment.

Meanwhile, Labour Ministry permanent secretary Juthathawat Inthrasuksri said the ministry would repatriate 48 Thai nationals who last week were awarded US$1 million (Bt35.5 million) in compensation. A steel company implicated in a slave-labour scandal had forced Thai welders to work in squalid conditions without pay. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ordered Trans Bay Steel to pay the compensation. The welders had been in the US since 2002."

It seems astonishing how often Thai workers abroad seem to be badly treated. I have read of instances in Taiwan where they were kept in virtual concentration camps, in Israel on farmer was housing them in chicken coops and now in the US they were treated like slaves. Is it because they are respectful of percieved authority and biddable and maybe a bit placid?

It seems that Thailand exports workers around the world legally and illegally. At the same time importing workers from neigbouring countries, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and Nepal both legally and illegally.