I can’t help wondering if this matter escalated this way because Indian diplomats have done this before and aren’t responding to U.S. law. The prosecutor doesn’t quite come out and say that, but I wonder if this played out this way because it was an egregious example of an old problem or because they wanted to show the Indian government that minimum wage laws are taken seriously here.
Yup, you’re certainly not answering the question.
This article mentions a lawsuit in 2011 for similar issues in the NY consulate. And I remember reading about a third case in the last year or so involving an Indian diplomat and the same basic problem. This sounds very much like a escalation that came about because of the lack of response to the lawsuits.
About the on going case n FIR in Delhi HC
The prosecution in New York, however, seems to have found Richards’ version of events more credible than Khobragade’s. truthseeker2 seems to think they just didn’t know what was happening in the Indian courts, but I think they probably did.
How does the Indian court have jurisdiction over Philip and Sangeeta’s actions in the United States?
Can the Delhi High Court enjoin me from suing someone? Anyone? Or just an Indian?
Answer enough for me, I guess.
A few pages ago, AK84 noted that contracts for domestic help are unheard of in India, and that it was likely that the consulate itself prepared the contract rather than Khobragade. Given the 2011 suit, I guess it’s something they’ve done before. If the embassy and consulate routinely violate US labor laws for people who do have immunity, I can certainly understand the US Attorney’s response when it’s done on behalf of somebody who doesn’t have immunity.
Watch following in full if you care, Videos present Indian version of this saga and details revealed by Devyani’s father (pls do not mind the USA bashing) -
part 1
part 2
part 3
I will also give more details of FIR in India when I get them.
I haven’t followed this saga closely enough to know what kind of visa the maid had exactly, but for a B-1 visa (which is typical for domestic employees of someone on a temporary U.S. visa) a written labor contract is a normal requirement:
“A personal or domestic employee who accompanies or follows to join an employer who is seeking admission into, or is already in, the United States in B, E, F, H, I, J, L, M, O, P, or Q nonimmigrant status, must meet the following requirements:
(1) The employee has a residence abroad which he or she has no intention of abandoning (notwithstanding the fact that the employer may be in a nonimmigrant status which does not require such a showing);
(2) The employee can demonstrate at least one year’s experience as a personal or domestic employee;
(3) The employee has been employed abroad by the employer as a personal or domestic employee for at least one year prior to the date of the employer’s admission to the United States;
OR
If the employee-employer relationship existed immediately prior to the time of visa application, the employer can demonstrate that he or she has
regularly employed (either year-round or seasonally) personal or domestic employees over a period of several years preceding the domestic employee’s visa application for a nonimmigrant B-1 visa;
(4) The employer and the employee have signed an employment contract which contains statements that the employee is guaranteed the minimum or prevailing wages, whichever is greater, and free room and board, and the employer will be the only provider of employment to the employee;
(5) The employer must pay the domestic’s initial travel expenses to the United States, and subsequently to the employer’s onward assignment, or to the employee’s country of normal residence at the termination of the assignment.”
Do I understand that the Indian government accuses the maid of an immigration scheme… A scheme which could not be successful unless the Indian government intentionally defrauded the US government?
Clever one, isn’t she, to force the consulate to lie to immigration officials like that.
Or maybe, just maybe, they routinely lie to immigration to import house-servants, demonstrating the Indian government doesn’t give a fuck about human trafficking as long as socially important people get the nearly-free housemaid they consider their right. And is trying virtually any tactic that will shut her up. So sad for them, on US soil she’s an asylee due solely to the consulate’s dumbfuck illegal actions.
Hahah. We picked up a lot. By the time 40 years of socialism was done with us, 42% of the country was below the poverty line. 20 years after we turned only partly into a market based economy, that number, measured the same way, has dropped to less than half that. And in fact, as I mentioned to LHOD earlier, the strict labour regulations that are still leftover from the socialist era are a significant stumbling block in reducing poverty even further. The perfect being an enemy of the good again.
My perspective is that, if with ‘mistreatment’ someone is better off than they are without it, then it isn’t mistreatment. The law may define it to be so, and I have ever acknowledged the right of the US to do so. All I ask is lets not pretend that the woman would have been better off had she not been ‘mistreated’. She would have been worse off. You are, in your questionable wisdom, taking someone who would have been worse off had ‘X’ not happened, and then calling ‘X’ mistreatment. This is a woman who earned double what she would normally make, all living expenses paid for. That it is less than some hypothetical perfect standard which was never a real option does NOT make it mistreatment. It does make it illegal, and I agree with that. All I’ve asked is that the moral outrage on behalf of the ‘victim’ be toned down. It’s stupid. Of course if it is established that the woman was treated badly, or her passport was confiscated, or there was other abuse, I’m all for some outrage. Right now, there are allegations from a person who has proven to be untrustworthy in not honouring an agreement that made her better off, and who stands to gain immensely by making precisely the sort of allegations - of abuse - that she has been making.
One of the conditions for her passport was that she work for the Indian government. If you’re not ok with her violating American laws, why’re you ok with her violating Indian ones? Just because they seem wrong to you? Do you notice anything off about that perspective?
I have seen absolutely no evidence that there is anything ‘indentured’ about this whole business. If the maid simply wanted to quit her job, I have seen no evidence that she could not. She could quit her job(which would require her to turn in her passport - a special category given to her only because she was accompanying an Indian diplomat), fly back to India, and go through the normal procedure for getting a passport and visa if she wanted to go and work in the US. Apparently, she wanted to short circuit the process that every other Indian has to go through.
One easy possibility is that the letter was scanned and emailed to be printed out and given to the husband. I’m not saying it necessarily isn’t a setup. It could be. But it’s entirely possible that it isn’t.
Ha. So leaving the maid (and thus her family) with much less income than what she is voluntarily agreeing to is somehow more moral with respect to the maid? It may be the more honest thing to do with respect to American laws, sure.
Ha. The boss who made her work for more than double the pay that she would have otherwise gotten after being approached by the maid asking for work. Why is it not important that the American legal minimum wage was never an option that was on the table?
I have never said that the employer did not benefit. Sitting in India, both the employer and the maid benefit from the agreement that they made. Which is why they made it. Again, do you suppose that the US embassy did not conduct a visa interview at all for the maid? That the maid didn’t know what to say if asked? She knew what she was getting into and she got into it because it was a great deal for her. It was also a great deal for the employer, of course. They were both going to be better off by breaking the law with this agreement. Once in the USA however, only the maid benefits from the deviation from their agreement that she has made, and from making accusations of abuse. It’s like a brilliant game theory example in fact, and had Khobragade ever studied any, she would have known not to have made the arrangement in which there was such a strong incentive for her maid to break it. She definitely did behave stupidly and illegally. There is no question about it, and I have never said she didn’t.
I do not see how the maid was “blackmailing” Khobargade.
Khobargade violated US law - lied on visa application and underpaid the maid.
For underpayment the maid has the right, per American law, to go to Court and file a civil suit. The criminal case against Khobargade is a separate one and between the State and Khobargade.
To waive her right to go to Court, the maid makes an offer of settlement to Khobargade.
Indian elite establishment calls the offer of settlement blackmail and gets sundry orders from compliant courts in India - it smacks of an attempt to teach the maid a lesson. I have not heard or seen anything on this board or elsewhere about what specific Indian law the maid violated. The Indian establishment is far from dumb - so the silence is eloquent.
The Indian law that she has been booked under is Section 420 - Cheating.
ETA - And I can absolutely see how that Indian law is violated too. They have an agreement under which the maid gets a passport and agrees to work for Khobragade. The maid then breaks the agreement, demands more money and asks for a new passport. If she wanted to break the agreement without cheating, she could have quit, and come back to India.
Under Anerican law, a contract to break the law is void ab initio - it doesn’t exist and can’t be enforced. You can’t cheat such a contract. It’s a nulliity. The US court will never ever enforce a contract to do a crime, particularly not when the crime is against the US government.
How was their agreement not a contract to break the law? Or are contracts to break the law treated as valid in Indian law?
Isn’t she entitled to more money?
Do Indian contracts have to consider American laws? The maid can be guilty of cheating in India, and the employer in America. Everybody wins!
Under Indian law, which is the context you’re taking that from, no.