If she had been able to make bail reasonably soon after arrest. She would have been able to stay in her clothes. Since that didn’t happen she was placed in holding with others. For multiple reasons I’m sure you can figure out, they don’t want any contraband getting into the jail. It was proper.
Is there a source for this? I’m just curious. I had assumed that the USMS had detained and searched her before she had her initial appearance and bond hearing. Did the arresting officers take her directly to the magistrate?
I’m willing to bet that she knew she was going to be paid INR 30,000 and was more than happy with it at the time. That’s way more money than she would make as a maid/babysitter in India. She may not have known that was lower than minimum wage laws in the US, although given that her husband and her seem to have worked for embassy people, she may have too.
That didn’t happen until AFTER she went missing and decided to claim damages from her employer. She was issued an ‘official’ passport that was tied to her service to an Indian diplomat. She would never have gotten the passport or visa without the agreement for the service. If she went missing, she was legally in the wrong in India. Suddenly it’s OK to evade Indian laws, but American ones must be followed? Hmm.
Once again - I agree that the consular officer was breaking American laws and should be prosecuted, although the US could have been more sensible . It would have been the legal and right thing to do for the consular officer to not bring the maid if she could not afford to pay her minimum wages.
However, moral outrage on behalf of the poor exploited maid is ridiculous. The ONLY person in this entire scenario who is better off than she was before, by far, now that her entire family is joining her on visas provided by the US government, is the maid. The ONLY reason she is so much better off is because she was ‘exploited’. Had this issue not blown up the way it has, had she not absconded, had she honoured her agreement or gone back to India when she didn’t want to, she would STILL have been better off. Somehow, I find it difficult to be outraged about ‘exploitation’ that makes someone unambiguously better off. Some people in the thread have different opinions on the matter. So be it.
She’s not *in *India, she’s in the US. It’s American laws - and only those - that apply. Those laws will, of course, include the possibility of her being extradited to India if appropriate, but will also include the possibility of her being allowed to stay in the US if that is appropriate - and given the facts of this case, that she’s been badly mistreated by her Indian boss, and that the expressed opinion of most Indians is that that mistreatment should continue, it probably is appropriate.
The passport she was on was an official passport i.e issued only to people who are deputed for service abroad by the government of India. Her passport was legally bound to her continued service to an Indian diplomat. If she wanted to stop serving, all she had to do was quit her job and return to India. She went missing instead, and found a lawyer to press charges ad demand that she be issued a fresh passport without that restriction. It’s reading more and more to me like the maid has simply used this channel to immigrate to the US, when the US embassy would never have allowed her to had she applied on her own from India. Bloody clever of her.
The consular officer should never have taken her along in the first place on a contract that allowed her to do this. She should have either paid the legal minimum wage, or not taken her. Which would have meant not taking her, since legal minimum wage in the US is probably not far away from what she makes herself. The maid would have been much worse off, but that’s ok because she wouldn’t have been exploited.
I have seen no evidence whatsoever that she’s been badly mistreated by her employer, unless you’re counting just the wage thing as bad mistreatment. I’ve already laid out why I don’t agree with that. Nor do I see how badly mistreating a woman under her employ would benefit the employer. I have seen evidence that the maid violated the terms under which she was issued a special category passport by the Indian government, and from which violation she is now benefiting immensely.
All she had to do to NOT violate those terms was quit her job and return to India.
That she chose not to do so, and picked a course that would benefit her but only at the expense of those who put her in the position* to seek that benefit doesn’t give me a great deal of faith in what she says. Had she gone missing and not pressed charges of abuse, she would have had to go back to India. If she wanted to stay on in the US, as she clearly did, she had to press the charges that she did.
*a position which was anyway much better than she was in when she was unemployed in India
Thanks.
Paying someone less than the minimum wage is badly mistreating them. So is verbally abusing them, and taking their passport. It’s irrelevant whether she broke the terms of her passport or her contract, as the US has allowed her to enter, and the contract was illegal.
There is absolutely no reason she should follow the terms of an illegal contract. Not that any contract in the US (to my knowledge) can compel someone to work anyway, let alone allow one to work for below minimum wage. The only reason she could stay in the US would be if she’s in danger going back to India - something that seems quite likely based on your attitude and the attitudes of other Indians.
Then perhaps your outrage should be directed at those who make the lives of unemployed Indians so bad, not those who try to ensure employees in America are treated to a tolerable minimum standard. That India is happy to treat poor people (and gays, and others) like shit emphatically does not mean that other countries should do so.
Unless her employer has the right to confiscate her passport–and if you claim that’s the case, I’ll need a clear cite to that effect, thanks–all of this is irrelevant. The problem isn’t that the passport wasn’t free and clear of diplomatic ties or whatever, the problem is that it was confiscated. Confiscating the passport of your foreign employee is to the best of my knowledge illegal, and to the best of my wisdom skeevy.
You people are all brilliant examples of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Let’s examine her situation before this starts off. She’s in India, and given the reports that her husband approached the consular officer(CO for short from now) for a job, apparently unemployed. Her husband was employed as a driver for the Mozambique embassy. Let’s say for an income of 20,000 INR. Which is around double what drivers can usually make, but let’s assume that since he was employed at an embassy he was being paid more, and lets be conservative. Let’s say she also earns around INR 15,000, which is again quite high for unskilled work in India. In 35k, they had to support themselves and their two daughters. How many movies and coffee shops and hairstylists do you think she was going to? I’ll tell you - bloody well none.
Let’s now examine her family’s new situation. Her husband approaches the CO for a job. CO and her agree on INR 30k plus room and board. Her household’s income is now approximately double what it was, with no additional costs beyond communication. You people are all behaving as though the options this woman had were between double the family income and 10 times or whatever the American minimum wage would have made it. * That is simply not the case *. The American minimum wage makes her entirely unaffordable for the CO. She would have to stay on in India, with a household income of around half what it became. Yes she doesn’t get coffees and hairstylists and outings in New York instead. She has still become much better off than what she was before.
I have not seen any evidence that her passport was confiscated, only allegations. Nor am I saying that is ok to do if that’s what happened. I’m merely saying that she was not on indentured servitude. The only reason that she got the case registered against her in India was that under the terms of her passport she had to work for the Indian diplomat. If she wanted to quit, she couldn’t stay on in the US. She was free to go back to India. She went missing instead.
It’s not India’s concern whether she stays in the US, it’s the US’s.
Why is a passport issue between the maid and the government of India purported to be a more serious issue than an Indian government official committing an act of perjury directed at the government of the United States?
And I take objection to the idea that someone living in New York on $3.85 an hour is “benefiting immensely.” Teenagers who have all their food, rent, clothing, and other necessities taken care of are required to be paid almost three times that wage.
The main person I see who benefited significantly is Khobragade, who apparently lied to the US Government to get a household worker into the country, lied about how much the maid would be paid, got all the benefits of having a full-time maid (which is a very significant luxury in this country), and only had to pay her 10% of what she promised.
Absolutely she shouldn’t follow an illegal contract. But she shouldn’t do something illegal in turn right? She’s not compelled to work, but the terms of her passport does compel her to return to India if she doesn’t want to continue working. She did not do so.
There is so much self righteousness ad stupidity in this that I don’t even know where to begin. Do you think people in India are poor because others in India want them to be? Fuck that shit. I refuse to even respond to something as offensive as this.
Isn’t that (bolded part) up to her and the US rather than India?
It’s not. I have never at any point claimed the official shouldn’t be prosecuted. I have just said who I’m more likely to believe about the ‘abuse’ and why.
You people are all brilliant examples of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Let’s examine her situation before this starts off. She’s in India, and given the reports that her husband approached the consular officer(CO for short from now) for a job, apparently unemployed. Her husband was employed as a driver for the Mozambique embassy. Let’s say for an income of 20,000 INR. Which is around double what drivers can usually make, but let’s assume that since he was employed at an embassy he was being paid more, and lets be conservative. Let’s say she also earns around INR 15,000, which is again quite high for unskilled work in India. In 35k, they had to support themselves and their two daughters. How many movies and coffee shops and hairstylists do you think she was going to? I’ll tell you - bloody well none.
Let’s now examine her family’s new situation. Her husband approaches the CO for a job. CO and her agree on INR 30k plus room and board. Her household’s income is now approximately double what it was, with no additional costs beyond communication. You people are all behaving as though the options this woman had were between double the family income and 10 times or whatever the American minimum wage would have made it. That is simply not the case . The American minimum wage makes her entirely unaffordable for the CO. She would have to stay on in India, with a household income of around half what it became. Yes she doesn’t get coffees and hairstylists and outings in New York instead. She has still become much better off than what she was before.
If she wanted to quit and stay on in the US, her passport would be revoked by the Indian government. After that I absolutely agree it would be up to the US. Had she not levelled charges of abuse against her employer though, do you think the US would have let her stay on?
She was free to go back without a passport? What’s your evidence for this claim? That’s a big part of the point of a passport: it makes it easy to get back into your own country with a minimum of fuss.
You’re making an awful lot of claims with a minimum of evidence.
Furthermore, you keep harping on the idea that it was a great thing for her life to be paid sub-minimum wages in the US. Even if we stipulate that it was (which FTR I’m not conceding, only stipulating), it’s a big old stinky deal. As I’ve said elsewhere, minimum wage laws aren’t just to protect the individual worker, they’re to protect all other workers. Perhaps the consulate worker wouldn’t have had a maid, but she likely would have purchased services from folks in the US, services that the maid was providing, and she would have purchased those services at a rate that allowed real wages to be paid. And by preventing this sort of exploited labor anywhere in the US, we increase the likelihood that all workers will be treated well. In areas where we turn a blind eye toward such exploitation (construction, farm labor, etc.), working conditions and wages rapidly race to the bottom.
In light of India’s demands that she be arrested for backing out of an illegal contract, yes.
What is your evidence that her passport was confiscated? The allegation from a person who benefits immensely from making the allegation?
I agree with all this - the purpose of the minimum wage law is protection of the American labour market. All I’m asking is that we not pretend it is the protection of people outside the American labour market, which this maid was. She did not have a passport that permitted her to participate in the American labour market