“Might as well bring back slavery.”
Oh, that’s being done too. There’s so much immigration news today, I can’t post it all. There are just too many greedy people these days....with NO conscience.
Thai workers describe being lured into slavery in U.S.
More than two dozen immigrants, covering their faces and continuing to fear for their safety, speak out about what authorities call the largest labor-trafficking case in U.S. history.
Seven years in the making, the case broke open last week when a federal grand jury in Honolulu indicted Mordechai Orian, the Israeli-born president of Global Horizons Manpower Inc., a Beverly Hills labor contracting firm. Five of Orian’s associates were also indicted on criminal charges of labor coercion of about 400 Thai farm workers.
As he took the lectern Wednesday, a 42-year-old farmworker described being recruited by Thai associates of Global Horizons to pick apples in Washington and pineapples in Hawaii. They promised him a 40-hour workweek with pay that amounted to more than 10 times his $100 monthly income as a struggling rice farmer in rural Thailand, he said.
But rather than finding freedom and independence, he said, he was charged an $18,000 recruiting fee and given less than half the work promised. The recruiters confiscated his passport, confined him to a wooden shack, warned him not to speak to anyone outside the farm and threatened him with violence and deportation if he tried to escape, he said.
Finally, in September 2005, he escaped under cover of darkness by running through pineapple fields, he said.
Since his escape, Lee has found work as a cook in a Thai restaurant and received a visa allowing him to stay in the U.S. as long as he cooperates with law enforcement on the case.
“I thought I would find freedom and jobs here,” he said at the news conference. “I thought the United States was a civilized nation, the highest in the world. I never imagined this kind of thing could happen here.”
________
Sir, we never imagined this kid of thing could happen here, either.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0909-slave-labor-20100909,0,4990986.story
I guess I meant “legal” slavery.
The cases you cite sound almost like kidnapping and imprisonment.
It used to be just in the sex trade. Now we’re hearing more and more
of those stories.
I agree with the concluding comment of your post:
“...I never imagined this kind of thing could happen here”