India’s demands were made only because she claimed abuse by her employer. Absent those claims of abuse, India’s demands would have been absent too. Then do you think she would have been allowed to stay on?
Sorry, what? Do you seriously believe this?
Why are you more inclined to believe someone who apparently got caught red-handed in a series of lies, rather than someone who was apparently stuck working in illegal conditions? I just don’t understand why you think the one who appears to have committed perjury is more trustworthy. It boggles the mind, and literally the only explanation I can think of is that it is a judgment based on the classes of the two individuals.
I don’t think it is a valid excuse for exploitation in one place to be compared to much greater exploitation in another place. For example, if a Mexican migrant worker sneaks into the United States illegally, and finds a job where he is paid a pittance, works long hours, etc., I don’t care what his situation would have been in Mexico. Our country, our rules, and the employer of the migrant laborer should face stiff penalties – just as you seem to acknowledge.
I consider it wholly immoral to assert that the Mexican got a pretty good deal in the United States, because then we’re dividing humanity up into first, second, third and fourth class people. That’s repugnant. When someone is in the US, everyone should be treated fairly and equally, regardless of race, sex, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and so on.
WTF? Yes, she did. That was the whole point of getting a US visa to work as domestic help.
Are you asking me if I’m not a libertarian zealot who worships at the feet of Ayn Rand? Because no, I’m not: labor protection, applied consistently, protects workers. I believe that.
She was working in America. What part of that don’t you understand? The consul should not be allowed to hire a foreign worker at less than the rate they would have to pay an American. By breaking that law, she damaged the American labour market, as well as the servant. This isn’t a trivial crime, and it isn’t even mostly about money. It’s about someone thinking the rules don’t apply to them, and wanting to screw over both someone they consider an inferior and the country they’ve chosen to come work in.
I’m just looking at who benefits and how. I’m also doubtful that the perjury was committed only by the consular officer in the first place either. Do you think the US embassy granted visas without a visa interview? Look at the situation dispassionately - in the first case, both parties maid and Consular officer(CO) benefit from lying about the wages she is going to get paid. The maid gets way more money than she would get in India, although not American minimum wages. The CO gets a maid in New York at rates which you wouldn’t get maids in NY for. Once in NY, the maid benefits from the path that she has taken, and the CO does not. I just don’t see that the maid has some sort of victim status here, which most people in the thread are appropriating on her behalf. The CO was in the wrong, but the victim was not the maid, it was the American labour market.
That’s only your opinion. The fact is that the Mexican worker is better off than he was in Mexico. The law against allowing it is justified not because it helps the illegal migrant - it doesn’t - but because it helps the American labour market. That’s fine, but to pretend as though illegal migrants are better off because employers in the US can’t ‘exploit’ them by paying better wages than they would earn in Mexico is simply that - a pretence.
No her passport was an ‘official’ passport. Issued by the Indian government to those supporting the government on official duty.
No, that labour protection applied in the US helps workers outside it.
Given the facts of the case thus far, and in particular regard to the wage she was paid, I do not believe that she ‘damaged’ the servant and I’ve expressed why, at great length.
At the same time, what part of the “consul officer should be prosecuted for perjury and paying less than minimum wages” do you not understand? How many times have I repeated that in this thread? Almost as many times as I’ve posted. If you’re not reading what I have to say , and as offensive as some of your ideas are anyway, I refuse to respond to you henceforth, have a good day.
The whole root of the problem is that Khobragade submitted fraudulent visa applications and contracts to the State Department in order for the maid to work here. The requirements and strings attached to an Indian passport is completely irrelevant here: the United States isn’t charging anyone with any malfeasance regarding the passport. The issue is the visa and the labor contract – the visa and the contract to work in the United States as a housekeeper.
You can’t simultaneously claim that she would have been substantially worse off in India and argue (in essence) that she wasn’t coerced into signing an illegal, unfair contract. Doing something you really don’t want to do in order to avoid even worse consequences is the dictionary definition of coercion.
I have absolutely no problem with prosecuting her for submitting fraudulent documents to the US government. She shouldn’t have done it. I have repeated this numerous times in the thread. My only point is that the maid is not some sort of exploited victim as far as the wages go. If she suffered abuse above and beyond that then of course it is unacceptable.
However, you are wrong that the strings attached to the Indian passport are irrelevant. The maid went missing, and her first demand (through a lawyer) was 10,000 dollars and a normal passport. She wanted to stay on in the US and work for someone else, and her passport would not allow her to do so, unless she filed claims for abuse. Because if she hadn’t done that, and simply tried to work for someone else, the Indian government would have revoked her passport for violating the conditions under which it was issued. She would have in all likelihood been deported by the US.
So every time I get a job that’s substantially better than my old one I’ve been coerced into signing up for it? Good to know.
Ah, sorry, I see the confusion. You were asking me if I believed:
I intended for the “in the US” clause to apply to “all workers”: I’m saying that when you prevent exploited labor anywhere in the US, it increases the likelihood that all workers in the US will be treated well.
You presumably thought I meant “in the world” or “in the universe” or “in the time-traveling multiverse” or something, and were understandably astonished that I believed something so odd.
But no, the lack of clarity was mine. “In the US” was intended to be implied in the latter clause as well. Since this incident took place in the US, I believe that applying proper labor protections to this worker in the US would serve to help all workers in the US when they work in the US.
Right. That does clear things up 
FWIW, labour regulations do have the potential to cause damage to labour, although it would vary from case to case. In India, we have some pretty stringent labour regulations. Unfortunately, they just push more economic activity into the ‘unorganised’ sector(or to China). Net result is that fewer people have jobs or those that have jobs are worse off than they would be if the labour regulations were less stringent but applied to them. This is not just me mouthing off. There’s academic research to the effect. But that’s a whole other topic, sorry.
Sure, that’s one theory–but it’s not the prevailing theory in the US, as represented by our labor law. Here, labor protections are designed to protect workers as a whole group, and even if you make the dubious claim that this employee’s exploitation was a great thing for her, our country believes it’s not a good thing for workers in general to allow any worker to be beholden to an exploitative contract.
What’s dubious about my claim? It’s perfectly factual. She was making much more money than she would have in India, even if less than American minimum wages, and she was not beholden to stay in her contract. She could have quit her job at any time and gone back to India.
Like I said before: you’re making a better case that the maid was coerced into signing an unfair contract than you are for the idea that she’s making out like a bandit.
If we’re imagining a world in which this contract didn’t get signed for some reason, let’s imagine it’s because India doesn’t allow such exploitative agreements, either: if you want to hire someone in India, you have to pay them a fair wage.
But more importantly, you’re repeating the claim that she could have quit at any time and gone back to India, without any cite, yet again. Her passport was confiscated, and she was told she had not choice but to continue working. That’s at odds with your account of events.
Is quitting her job illegal, per Indian law?
Or it the act of not revealing her whereabouts to the Indian Govt that is illegal, per Indian law?
Can you provide references to relevant Indian statute?
I can see that quitting her job entails surrendering her official passport - it appears her official passport was in the custody of her employer anyway - so she cannot be charged with failing to surrender her official passport when she quit.
Does quitting make her ineligible for an ordinary passport?
Does Indian law require that once she quits her job, she return to India?
And you’re repeating this again without any evidence that it was so. It is simply not established fact that her passport was confiscated, or that she had to continue working. By all the reports I’ve read, the woman just up and disappeared.
I’m not seeing the coercion either, Ravenman. Help me if I have this wrong: the maid and Khobagrade are back in India, going through the hiring process. The contract placed before the maid is the 3.35 an hour wage, not the 5100 USD a month or whatever Khobagrade claimed on her forms filed with the State Department. If it was the 5100 USD deal, then it’s a clear case of fraud, that’s wrong, and we can stop looking at this any further.
I don’t think it was though, for the reasons bldysabba lays out. That kind of money is more than the consular official makes, never mind the maid she’s hiring. So, if it’s a deal for 3.35-ish per hour, plus room, board, and the maid gets to see America, how is it coercion when the alternative for the maid is to work in India for roughly 1/2 to 1/3 the salary? I agree that this deal would be against U.S. labor laws. But the alternative isn’t that the Consulate’s going to pay minimum wage; it’ll be that the position won’t exist anymore. How is making double the money unfair to the maid, sitting in India? If the terms of the contract were changed—she’s forced to work 16 hours, locked in a broom closet, and worse—that also falls under fraud. I’m just questioning that, given the maid’s position in India, the contract itself is unfair. If this contract is unfair, are the terms for the numerous H-1B employment visas, where if your employer/sponsor fires you, back to your home country you go, also unfair? Is the difference there that the H-1B holders are paid above U.S. minimum wage?
Is it undisputed that the maid’s passport was confiscated, as opposed to the consulate threatening to fire her, thereby removing her visa, and requiring her deportation? If confiscated, then again, the maid can’t quit. Even if she agreed to not ever quit back in India, as many of you have noted, indentured servitude is not something the U.S. will support. Even if both parties agree to it. I’d agree that confiscating the passport would also be a coercive situation.
Or do we just have the maid’s word that the passport was confiscated? I genuinely don’t know. If it’s just the maid’s word, then, based on the requirements for obtaining a T visa, where one of them is:
I’m going to expect the maid to paint her employer as a combination of Simon Legree and Cruella de Ville.
But a contract paying double the going rate for labor, yet still less than U.S. law requires, doesn’t strike me in itself as coercive.